Horry County to outlaw ‘puppy mills,’ allow ‘community cats.’ What you need to know.
A sweeping update to Horry County’s animal care and control laws that the County Council is now considering would fully outlaw the commercial sale of dogs and cats, increase shelter requirements for dogs and other animals that live outdoors and give a county blessing to community cat programs.
That would mean that so-called “puppy mills,” or businesses that explicitly breed and raise dogs to sell for a profit, would be outlawed. Individuals wanting to sell puppies they don’t wish to keep won’t be affected. Similarly, pet stores that allow nonprofit adoption agencies to operate in their buildings won’t be affected.
The update to the law also gives explicit county approval to community cat programs, in which volunteers and nonprofit agencies trap stray and feral cats, have them spayed or neutered, and returned to the wild. County officials said Tuesday that such programs successfully reduce the overpopulation of non-domesticated cats, reduces cats’ “destructive” tendencies and can help control rodents and other pests in certain areas.
The updated law, if passed by council in coming weeks, would only affect the unincorporated areas of Horry County. Other municipalities, like Myrtle Beach, have their own laws on breeding and selling animals.
Both animal advocates and county law enforcement officials applauded the updated legislation on Tuesday, which passed the County Council’s public safety committee unanimously. The changes represent the county’s harshest crackdown on so-called puppy mills and other commercial breeding operations, and explicitly acknowledge the benefits of trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs used in community cat colonies around the county.
The changes also make explicit what Horry County considers to be acceptable shelter for outdoor pets and animals, making it easier for county law enforcement to determine when an animal is not being properly taken care of. County police may charge a person with a misdemeanor if they’re found to not be adequately caring for an outdoor animal.
Karen McGranahan was one of the advocates at Tuesday’s meeting, and attended to support the community cat provisions. McGranahan is president of Bikini Beach Cat Rescue, an organization that runs a trap-neuter-return program by training and deploying volunteers to trap stray cats, connecting them with a network of veterinarians who provide low-cost spaying, neutering and tagging — a process where a cat’s ear is clipped — and returning them to where they came from. McGranahan said their work allows several “cat colonies” to exist around the county that don’t bother neighbors and don’t breed.
“The whole purpose behind that is to keep the kittens from being born. The cats are running around (and) the shelters get overcrowded because people turn them in,” she said. “We’re trying to stop the population from getting out of control.”
She added: “There’s a common issue, if we can work with both the people who hate cats and the people who like cats we can solve the problem.”
No more ‘puppy mills’
Under the updated legislation, Horry County will bar pet stores — defined as a retail business, company or other legal entity — from selling dogs and cats. The county has previously cracked down on breeding operations in 2015, and in 2017 they added to restrictions by putting in place rules that allow police to inspect animal breeders’ once a year. The first restrictions came after puppy mills were discovered in the Conway and Loris areas.
The legislation now being considered by county leaders would be the strictest crack down yet.
“What it says is we don’t support puppy mills anymore. If your whole business is based upon the sale of animals then that would be a no for Horry County,” said Horry County Police Captain J. P. Wyatt, who helped draft the legislation over the past six months. “It doesn’t affect the average person selling a dog or selling a litter of puppies, it’s the commercialization of it.”
The way the county legislation is written, the breeding of dogs and cats is still allowed, but the commercial sale of those animals is prohibited. The legislation also bars breeders from giving away a dog or cat in exchange for a buyer purchasing another product or service.
Wyatt said the intent of updating the law is to allow people to own, and even breed, animals as pets, but not as a way to make money.
“With the commercialization of selling the animals, that’s how you get into puppy mill situations when you have people breeding them for the sheer monetary value, not for the well being of the animals, not for the well being of the community, just for the money and that’s what this would stop,” Wyatt said. “It would help alleviate puppy mills.”
County gives blessing to ‘community cats’
The second major piece of the update makes so-called “community cat” operations legal, meaning that people who care for cats in a given area but don’t own them are allowed to do so without facing any penalties from the county.
The county is defining community cats as those that are “free roaming” and don’t have any discernible tags, microchips or owners. Rather than continue a practice of trapping and euthanizing cats, as the county has done in the past, the county will now allow colonies of cats to live in the county, provided an effort is made to spay or neuter them, and tag them once they’ve had the procedure. Both advocates and county officials believe that will be both a cost-effective and humane way to deal with stray cats.
The legislation also allows the county to budget money in the future for a more formal trap-neuter-return program. Currently, volunteers do much of that work. Bikini Beach Cat Rescue regularly raises funds to help pay for the spaying and neutering of the cats its volunteers trap and tag. Currently, Wyatt said, the county animal shelter has a grant that may be used to provide low-cost spay and neuter procedures as part of trap-neuter-release programs.
“The big part of that legislation is that the county recognizes the community cats and recognizes (that) the solution is to reduce the population,” Wyatt said. “It says the county supports this initiative and if there is funds available then perhaps we can do it a discounted cost.”
Both Wyatt and McGranahan said that allowing cat colonies to exist in conjunction with trap-neuter-return programs appeases both people who like cats and those who don’t because the end result is reducing the cat population, but allowing those that are already here to live largely undisturbed.
McGranahan, who said she’s been involved in cat rescue work for a decade now and previously worked at animal shelters, recalled an interaction she had with a man nearly 10 years ago when she was trying to raise money for her organization. She and other volunteers were collecting funds outside of a Kroeger grocery store when the man approached their table.
“(He) said, ‘Cats? I hate cats!’ And before I could say anything he whipped his wallet out and put $20 in and I said, ‘Well wait a minute, if you hate cats, why do you want to contribute to spay/neuter?’” McGranahan recalled. “And he says, ‘Because I believe in what you’re trying to do.’”
New requirements for outdoor pets
The final plank of the updated animal care legislation the County Council is considering describes explicitly for the first time what the county considers to be adequate shelter and care for pets, like dogs and cats, that primarily live outdoors. Previously, Wyatt said, the county didn’t have clear definitions, meaning that existing animal abuse laws were harder to enforce.
Under the update, animal caretakers will be required to provide “proper shelter” to all of their animals which is defined as a “house-like structure appropriate for the size and number of animals” the person is caring for. Shelters for dogs, specifically, have to be an “enclosed, waterproof and windproof structure of suitable size to accommodate each dog individually and allow retention of body heat.”
The shelters have to have proper drainage, must be free of waste and debris, and has to have a waterproof floor. During days when the temperature is expected to be 45 degrees Fahrenheit or colder, the shelter must have some protection from the wind. On days when the temperature is expected to be 90 degrees or hotter, the dog has to have access to adequate shade.
A shelter cannot be made out of metal or other materials that conduct heat easily, the legislation states. And if trees, shrubs, abandoned cars, cages or barrels aren’t big enough to fit the whole animal inside, they won’t meet criteria for proper shelter, the proposed law says. The proposals also says that animals owners have to feed their animals and keep them healthy, and that the animals cannot create a public nuisance.
“It became a gray area as far as, what does (proper shelter) mean to you vs. what does that mean to me?” Wyatt said. “It’s different, so what this law change has done is define what is proper shelter for a dog.”
He added: “The law change will help us go after that even better in the court system because it’s defined what actually is proper shelter. It’s not just my opinion, it’s actually codified.”
