Didn't expect this post to blow up so much but to clarify:
Yes, some small town animal control folks aren't cops. However, they all work very closely with police when it comes to seizing animals from owners, issuing fines, etc. They might not technically have a gun and a badge in every city, but rest assured, they are still also technically a branch of law enforcement. The difference is splitting hairs imo.
What inspired this post were the notes on a different post about anti-vaxxers not wanting to vaccinate their dogs for rabies. Most of these notes were in agreement that anti-vaxxers are in the wrong. HOWEVER most of these notes also sorely sorely sorely misunderstood exactly how dangerous rabies is.
Unfortunately now this post has some of those same notes:
Rabies is not rare in the US. The only reason for anyone living here to think that is because they do not have a lot of contact with wild animals and do not work in vet medicine.
Yes, you are more likely to get rabies from a wild animal (bats, skunks, raccoons, and foxes are the most common) however when it comes to unvaccinated domesticated animals, dogs, cattle, and cats make up 90% of rabies cases. So yes, be very cautious about any bite or scratch from a stray dog or outdoor cat. The only reason it is less common for domesticated animals to spread it than wild animals is because rabies comes from contact with other rabid animals, so it is more likely that wild animals will have contact with rabies than domesticated which are typically hanging out with humans (which are, thankfully, largely not rabid). Dogs are the #1 rabies vector worldwide, it is only in countries with robust vaccination protocols and dog-owning culture that keeps them inside most of the time that the risk transfers mostly to bats. The majority of human rabies-related deaths are caused by bites from stray or outdoor dogs.
Animals who are suspected to have rabies are killed, decapitated, and their brains destroyed in the process of testing for rabies. There is no other way to test for rabies. "Nooooo the poor doggo :(" and "it's not the dog's fault the owner sucks" sure but consider: rabies testing requires biopsies of the brain and brain stem, aka punching holes in the tissue in order to examine the changes on a microscopic level. That's uh. Not survivable. There is no other way to detect rabies in an animal. It doesn't live in the bloodstream, it just uses it as a highway to zip up to the brain and then starts doing its thing. Even though it is spread via saliva, blood, and brain matter, we have yet to be able to reliably detect it in rabid animals in anything but the last. (it is detectable in the first two but only at the late stages, well after the animal has become infectious and when it is obvious to anyone who has seen a rabid animal before that the animal is rabid)
It is not required on a federal level for all domesticated animals to have a current rabies vaccine- unless said domesticated animal came into contact with a wild animal known to be a rabies vector, at which point the CDC gets to decide and not the individual state. To me this is a really stupid rule because imo all of the continental US and Alaska should be vaccinating for rabies (Hawai'i and other island nations we've colonized don't need to if they've wiped out rabies or never had it spread, though import laws are super strict in those areas on purpose as a result) and if the dog or cat has a fight with a wild animal or a Mysterious Bite Wound the owner's just gunna be told to vaccinate anyway except now they have a lengthy quarantine ahead of them so we might as well just do it in advance everywhere.
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