Legislation

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The purpose of most pet limit laws is reportedly to prevent pet hoarding and to prevent dogs and cats from becoming a public nuisance. However, there are other ordinances in most local legislatures that sufficiently address both of these concerns, and pet limit laws pose unnecessary restrictions on residents without accomplishing either of those purposes. Our position on pet limits is that they are not useful anywhere because they punish responsible pet owners without actually preventing hoarding, neglect, or nuisance animals, and this page exists to explain that position.

Pet limits do not accomplish anything.

Every major animal welfare organization across the United States strongly opposes pet limit laws, and for good reason. The negative consequences these restrictions pose to pets—and to responsible pet owners—vastly outweigh any benefit that these laws provide to the public. Proponents of pet limit laws argue that they prevent animal cruelty, nuisance animals, and hoarding behavior, but in practice they fail to do any of these things. 

There is no correlation between the number of pets in a household and the level of care those pets receive; in fact, with the exception of hoarding, people who own multiple animals tend to be more dedicated (on average) to providing for all of their needs. Some people are more than capable of properly caring for all the needs of several animals, while others struggle to take care of just one or two. It is certainly true that every pet owner has a limit to the number of animals they can adequately care for, but for many people that number is higher than 3 (the dog limit imposed on citizens of many communities), and most localities have other laws in place to address issues of neglect and abuse. 

Pet limit laws are also intended to prevent animals from becoming a nuisance, but declaring that an arbitrary number of animals is a nuisance would be naive. In Commonwealth v. Gardner (1950), the judge pointed out that “Three or four dogs of a bad disposition that bark continually, and kept in an unsanitary way would, no doubt, be a nuisance that could be abated or enjoined, while, on the other hand, seven or eight dogs of a good disposition, that are not inclined to bark, and that are kept in a sanitary condition and do not annoy the neighborhood, might very well be held to be not a nuisance which could be abated or enjoined.” In other words, even our court system has established a precedent that the number of dogs in a household is not related to whether or not such dogs are a nuisance. The most common “nuisance” behaviors reported regarding dogs are barking and the smell of excrement, and there are other ordinances in every town that address these issues better than any pet limit ever could. Cats can only be a nuisance if they are allowed to roam the outdoors, and many cities have an ordinance (5-25.1e in Madison Heights, where we used to live) that totally disallows outdoor cats as well. 

Another court case (Holt v. City of Sauk Rapids, 1997) found that pet limit laws that are not based on evidence (i.e. nearly all of them) are invalid and unenforceable, and another case (Commonwealth v. Creighton, 1994) deemed such laws unconstitutional. 

Pet limit ordinances also fail to address animal hoarders. Hoarding is a mental illness characterized by keeping large numbers of animals beyond an individual’s ability to provide even the most basic care for the animals, along with the denial of their inability to adequately provide this care; animal hoarding does not simply mean keeping large numbers of animals. Hoarders generally do not register their animals, so most existing pet limit laws fail to detect them. The city of Grand Rapids attempted to impose a pet limit law in 2017 to address animal hoarding but withdrew due to countless public complaints; if they had followed through and passed the law, many compliant owners of multiple cats and dogs would have had to rehome their pets and hoarders would continue keeping as many animals as they can find.  The elucidation of hoarders depends on neighbors and other residents to report hoarding and other neglectful or abusive behavior, and on Animal Control to investigate these reports. Pet limit ordinances do not do anything to catch them. 

Overall, pet limit laws fail to accomplish any of their purposes, and they impose restrictions on responsible pet owners that cause significant animal welfare concerns.

Pet limits only affect responsible pet owners.

The only people who are affected by pet limit ordinances are the people who know the law and follow it, which are typically the most responsible pet owners. Many people are unaware their town even has a pet limit; some of these people have fewer than 3 cats and dogs, while others have more than 3. For those who knowingly exceed their local pet limit, the only thing stopping them from registering all of their animals—proving that they are up to date on rabies vaccinations—is the pet limit ordinance. Many people will keep more than 3 cats and dogs in their homes regardless of how many they are legally limited to, but there are responsible pet owners who would like to have more than 3 animals registered with their city or township but are unable to do so due to limit laws. 

Getting rid of pet limits would allow responsible pet owners to foster and/or adopt the stray cats on our streets and the dogs in our shelters. With these ordinances, violators are required to get rid of some of their animals, increasing the number of animals in shelters, and some of the less responsible pet owners who want more than 3 pets will resort to acquiring more pets from places they should not support. For example, responsible breeders of purebred dogs and cats, as well as responsible animal rescues, will perform home checks and ensure that the applicant is allowed to have another animal and that they are capable of caring for it. We personally experienced this when we lived in Madison Heights with 3 dogs and reached out to an ethical Leonberger breeder because we wanted a puppy. Puppy mills and backyard breeders, however, do not perform these home checks. Therefore, these laws require those seeking an additional pet to support irresponsible breeding practices, which negatively contributes to the overarching issue of animal welfare. 

Pet limits typically do not exempt service dogs or foster animals.

It is also unclear whether foster animals are exempt from many of these pet limits. A foster animal is not owned by the household it temporarily lives in, so it would seem that they would be exempt (and they should be, because fostering is excellent for animal welfare as a whole), but if you read the fine print of the city code in many areas, the definition of “owner” is literally anyone who knowingly allows an animal to be on their property. This is probably to prevent residents from feeding dozens of stray cats, but it is unfair to people who would like to foster cats and dogs (in addition to having their own animals), and there are other ways to deal with our stray cat problem (one way would be to remove pet limits so that more people can foster and/or adopt those stray cats). Because of these limit laws, many people decide not to foster animals because it would prevent them from being legally allowed to have three animals of their own. Rescues do not place foster animals in homes that cannot handle them, so there is no need to include foster animals within pet limits even if we do not get rid of the pet limit laws in their entirety. 

Registered service animals should also be exempt from the pet limit. Service animals include Working Service Animals (typically leader dogs and dogs to aid with epilepsy or anxiety disorders), Therapy Animals (animals that are well socialized and trained to be well behaved in schools and hospitals to provide comfort to students or patients), and Emotional Support Animals (animals that are primarily registered to provide comfort for their owner). Federal law prohibits local governments from banning or otherwise discriminating against service animals, but many city ordinances still prevent owners of these animals from owning additional animals. For example, if a Madison Heights resident has an Emotional Support dog and two cats, he or she is not allowed to get another dog or cat. If a household with multiple disabled people has a service animal registered to each of them, they cannot have any other pets unless they, too, are registered service animals, and the registration process takes time. Therefore, service animals should also be exempt from the pet limit law.

What can we do to get rid of these unethical laws?
When we lived in Madison Heights, we wrote a proposal to remove or increase the pet limit. We posted polls in the community Facebook groups, and the majority of Madison Heights residents were in favor of removing the pet limit, but they did bring up a few issues regarding the practical function of other laws. One concern expressed by several residents in the Facebook group was that their complaints were not investigated by Animal Control or enforced at the judicial level. Most of these complaints were regarding outdoor cats or barking dogs, but a couple residents told stories about their neighbors hoarding animals without ever being investigated by Animal Control, and one resident said that court cases involving animal abuse are often dismissed. When discussed at the City Council meeting, the Madison Heights police chief stated that he opposed the amendment and did not recommend removing or increasing the pet limit because the Madison Heights police like to use pets as probable cause to enter someone's home and bust them for other crimes. This is grossly unethical, and a blatant example of illegal police corruption, but it is the reason they gave for not wanting to change the law. The point, though, is that the Madison Heights City Code—as well as the code in nearly every other city and township—includes plenty of other ordinances that actually address issues of neglect, hoarding, and nuisances, and these ordinances need to be enforced, but there is no need for such a severe limit on the number of dogs and cats allowed in each household, and pet limit laws cause more harm than good by restricting responsible owners while irresponsible owners simply ignore the legal limit.