{"id":123394,"date":"2026-04-03T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-animal-control-has-its-priorities-backward\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T11:00:00","slug":"cortez-animal-control-has-its-priorities-backward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-animal-control-has-its-priorities-backward\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez Animal Control has its priorities backward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=3ba4ce41-a358-5d9b-b360-ebd942a1f4df&#038;function=cover&#038;type=preview&#038;source=false&#038;width=2000\" srcset=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=3ba4ce41-a358-5d9b-b360-ebd942a1f4df&#038;function=cover&#038;type=preview&#038;source=false&#038;width=800 800w, https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=3ba4ce41-a358-5d9b-b360-ebd942a1f4df&#038;function=cover&#038;type=preview&#038;source=false&#038;width=1200 1200w, https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=3ba4ce41-a358-5d9b-b360-ebd942a1f4df&#038;function=cover&#038;type=preview&#038;source=false&#038;width=1800 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 2000px\" width=\"1680\" height=\"958\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Apparently, there have been recent issues with off-leash dogs in town. Animal Control is patrolling and making sure even elderly, semiblind dogs sitting by their owners \u2013 like my mother-in-law\u2019s \u2013 are on leash. Today I got a court summons for letting one of my dogs chase a stick in a deserted park, where no one has ever objected to this activity and where there are no leash signs.<\/p>\n<p>What bothers me is that the same officer who wrote my summons responded when my husband found a large dog wandering near Slavens. Animal Control told us that a man had tried to drop off this same dog at the Cortez Shelter earlier that morning. He was turned away because the shelter was full, so he dumped his dog in the middle of town. To my shock, he was offered a choice: reclaim his dog and pay a fine, or surrender it and go scot-free. In other words, he not only abandoned an animal by a busy highway \u2013 thanks to Cortez Animal Control, he went unpunished and got exactly what he wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Animal Control, if you want to make a positive difference to dogs and people in Cortez, why don\u2019t you drive around and look for animals that are never let off chains or are outright abused? There is a lot of cruelty in this area, and you would be better served tackling it than hassling caring dog owners whose animals are causing no problems.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sarah Drummond<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-2eb82924b7d7555aafe60d0ba94f0501\">Cortez<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently, there have been recent issues with off-leash dogs in town. Animal Control is patrolling and making sure even elderly, semiblind dogs sitting by their owners \u2013 like my mother-in-law\u2019s \u2013 are on leash. Today I got a court summons for letting one of my dogs chase a stick in a deserted park, where no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5820,5819],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-123394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","category-opinion","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123394"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=123394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}