Legislators, state residents upset by proposed dog bill

The bill, introduced by Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, would make failure to secure the animals in the open area of a motor vehicle a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a $50 fine. A legislative committee is scheduled to hear testimony Tuesday from veterinarians and law-enforcement officials in support of the bill.

Dunn said witnesses will testify to the hazards of such rides to the dogs and to the people following behind if the dog jumps out.

“Somebody will go to have their dog treated at the vet — to get shots — and they end up getting treated for broken legs when the dog jumps out of the back of the truck on the way,” Dunn told The Tennessean.

Columbia resident Amy Beasley, 34, sees things differently. Her dogs, Jake, 12, and Sable, 5, look forward to their weekend rides in the back of the truck.

“If you say the words ‘ride in the truck,’ they are going nuts,” Beasley said. “For my dogs, the pleasure of these rides is second only to food. During the week, it’s all hubbub with everybody getting up and getting ready, but on weekends they kind of know we are all here. They follow me around like ‘When are we going to go? You are not going to work so it is time for us.'”

Some see the bill generally as a rural-urban quarrel, with rural residents against the bill.

Beasley said Dunn’s bill has good intentions but that how someone hauls their dog around should be a personal choice.

“I don’t think riding in the back of a pickup truck is a danger to the dogs or anyone else,” Beasley said. “If I thought it was a danger to them, I wouldn’t do it.”

Neither Jake nor Sable has ever tried to jump from the truck when it was moving, Beasley said.

Dunn insists the dangers are real. He said the Massachusetts Society for Protection of Animals found that 141 vets in a 1988 study treated 592 dogs thrown from truck beds that year. Elaine Weil of Clarksville agrees with Dunn.

“There are no inherent rights to endanger your dog or the public by allowing dogs to move about freely in an open truck bed,” Weil said in an e-mail to The Tennessean. “Those arguments are foolish and self-serving.”

Dunn claims he has received “hundreds” of e-mails in support of the legislation and just a few against it.

The bill makes it illegal for anyone to “intentionally transport a dog on the running board, fenders, hood or other outside part of any motor vehicle unless such dog is suitably harnessed, caged or enclosed so as to protect such dog from falling, jumping or being thrown from the motor vehicle.”

There are exceptions made for a dog being transported by a farmer requiring the services of the dog, or for a hunting dog being transported by a licensed hunter.

Rep. John Tidwell, D-New Johnsonville, said last month that Dunn’s legislation “would absolutely destroy the way people live with their animals.

“Quite frankly, the dog’s job when you go to the shopping center, when you go to the feed mill, is to protect the truck and what’s in it,” he said.

———

On the Net:

Read HB2184/SB2113 at Tennessee General Assembly:

http://www.legislature.state.tn.us