Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Good

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: afternoon. Welcome back to the Senate Committee on Government Operations Thank in you, Tim, for that. We'll obviously be talking about that bill next week. So we're on H eight forty one now. This is the accolade of miscellaneous animal welfare procedures. And one of the questions that came up the other day when Lisa Mylot was here was whether the number of dogs at 24, breeding dogs 35. Or 35. Sorry. See, we've already changed it, Lisa. No. It's still 35. Was something that we could support or we wanted to change in whatever fashion. So Mike Covey was expected to be with us. He's the executive director of the Vermont Traditions Coalition. But instead, and you have me at a tremendous disadvantage,

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Patty, is it? Patty Richards? Green Mountain Dog Club.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Who is she? I've never heard of her.

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: Well known.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Hi. Hi, I'm Patty Richards. I'm from the Green Mountain Dog Club and I have a kennel of 21 Siberian Huskies and happy to chat more.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah, we're just trying to get, as we try to do with every piece of legislation, the proper number and proper regulation of whatever it is that we're trying to fix. I don't know that there's a problem at 35 that would be solved if it went to 24. I'm completely in the dark about this, so help us out.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Yep, so happy. First of all, thank you very much for letting me come in and speak with you. And I know thirty five dogs sounds a little cuckoo, but it's it's a for the Siberian runny sled dog kennel. You'll see very large numbers in terms of dogs. We run 100 mile races and the 100 mile race like up in Fort Kent, Maine, there's a large race that we run. It's 10 dogs per sled and we're generally trying to do two or three sleds in the races. So we'll have at least 20 to 30 dogs running in this race. And then over the course of the winter, we have a pool of other dogs that are in reserve. Some dogs don't make the cut, other dogs might get injured. So we generally have a kennel numbers of roughly 40 dogs is not uncommon. And that's actually considered a small kennel for competing in dog sled races. Some of our compatriots have 50 to 60 dogs. So I am concerned about this 35 dog limit because it would hamstring us in terms of being able to compete, being able to offer dog sled rides is what we do for kind of business activity. We offer dog sled rides in the communities and for for hire. Essentially, have kids camps. We do bike drawings, sled dog. We have an internship through the University of Vermont. So it's kind of our business model. And there's another business in Eden, Vermont. Jim Blair runs the Eden Dog Split Adventures, and he's easily had well over 60 dogs as part of his pool to run tours for his business. So the 35 number is is concerning for kennels in doing that in doing dogsled rides in any sort of racing competition in terms of the kennel. And I'll open it with that and I see hands are up and happy to answer questions. And

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I'll just again, before we go to Senator Vyhovsky, currently there's no limit. There's no number attached to how many dogs anybody can have. So this would be the first attempt at finding a number. Right. Senator Vyhovsky?

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Well, and this bill actually doesn't have a limit on how many dogs you can own. It has a limit on how many intact breeding dogs you can own. Well, it is Yes. The way the language is written is that dogs who have been desaxed, puppies under four months old, do not count towards the 35 limit. So the conversation in here was that having 35 intact dogs for breeding was an awful lot of intact dogs. So we were actually discussing lowering that number not because it's an ultimate limit, but because of the concern around puppy bills.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Right. Understood. Absolutely understood. And

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: one of the

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: things I would share with you is in

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: terms

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: of our breeding program, we need to have a very wide range of dogs to breed from. So we don't have crossover in genetics. We don't want relationships of the dogs crossing over and have cat breeding. So we require a fairly large, group of dogs so that we can breed. How

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: many dogs do you have now?

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: I'm sorry, what's that?

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: How many intact dogs do you have currently?

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: So of the 21 dogs that I have, I have 11 that are spayed and neutered right now. So probably about half of our dogs are already spayed and neutered.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So have 10 or 11 intact dogs? Exactly, exactly.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: So

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: if we made 20 intact dogs, wouldn't that make a reasonable number? Right now we're

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: a small kennel because my partner, I'm co owner with another person, we're a very small kennel. We have had well over 40 dogs in the past.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Intact. Well over 40 intact dogs.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Maybe not intact, but close, well over 30 intact. So between the 30, we would hit this 35 limit in our past programs with our dogs.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yes.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: That were all under your ownership. Because I certainly understand as a purebred dog owner myself, importance of having diversity amongst the line, which is generally why there's breeding outside of the line and breeding with not all internal. I I I don't know. Yeah.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Right. Right.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So we know the term intact in here somewhere because the first time senator Vyhovsky said it, I had no idea what you meant. She used it yesterday.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: With all its parts.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Well, give me for Being the opposite

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: language in the bill. We say yes and so the opposite.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Right so within our kennel we have several lines of dogs that we that we're bringing genetically down through the through the different histories. We have we have literally three different lines of dogs that we can breed to just within our kennel and that allows us to breed for good runners, good physical eating, good behavior issues. We really tightly manage our breeding progrel. We don't sell our puppies. It's very rare that we sell our puppies. We're using them exclusively so that we can have a pool of dogs that we can do our craft with, that we can run, we can do races, we can offer sled dog tours and that we can participate in the activities that we do. So we're trying to, we do occasionally go outside of our kennel, but we try to maintain the lines that we have because it allows us the genetic diversity so that we can breed. The 35 number is, it would bump us into a problem if we were back up in the 40 range.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I don't know whether you could suggest a solution, Patty. Lisa, if you want to join us again at the table, feel free to

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: do that.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Problem that we're trying to figure out is we don't want to give comfort and guidance to puffy mills.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Agree.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: But I'm not sure how to accomplish both then. Certainly, if you're not selling the dogs, I understand that you're making a living having them run by or in front of a sled. I get that. I I don't know the language that we can use to sort of prevent the puppy mills from taking advantage of that number and still not restricting dog sled owners.

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: So Lisa Meilert, Director of Animal Welfare, for the record. I think it's difficult without a licensing scheme if there was at whatever point Vermont decides if it does, that it wants a licensing scheme, then that could be a differentiation that comes up. I think absent some sort of saying, You need to be licensed to be the sort of competitor, and if you're doing that, then you're limited to this number of litters. Or you need to be licensed as a breeder, but I think it's difficult without that sort of delineation to have different numbers. I don't know what the right number is here. That's why Rev. Good and Water Dovens had reached out to sportsmen and things like that to get a number for the mill. I definitely wouldn't where they're legitimate breeders, where they're not high volume breeders, then I see how their activity is harmful. That said, it becomes very difficult. Once again, we definitely have puppy mills that have moved into Vermont. The question is what number doesn't impede sportsmen and competitors, but at least put some half on breeding so that at some point we can say, No, too many. Right?

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: You've said that a lot better than I did.

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: Well, was a little bit messy. The language here I

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: think

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: was drafted in this way, and I'm not entirely sure, but I think it was drafted this way so that the issue you resolved yesterday about the burden of proof would be resolved in favor of, oh, no having to breed it. Basically to prove altered status because it's no more than 35 dogs, so that's the law. But the ones that are sexually sterilized or underage don't count. I think that that was an attempt to take that bermatoprofen,

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: which is

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: why it's kind a backwards definition. There might be refinements of the language that make sense. I don't know if that necessarily gets to Ms. Richard's concern that it could limit her breathing pool within her kennel. Okay. That's all I remember.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I'm gonna go to Senator Vyhovsky first because I think it's related, and Patty.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Wonder, and I don't, I wonder what your thoughts are on rather than limiting the number of intact dogs, because there other, there are also other reasons not breeding related that one might choose to keep dog intact. 35 dogs. In fact. No. No. No. But I'm wondering if instead of focus on the intact dogs, we could put a limit on how many litters are allowed to be created. So I've seen in some states they have a regulation on no more than 50 puppies. Got it. It's completely unenforceable unless you have some scams where people notify you, Georgia exempts one litter a year for licensing. It's completely unenforceable because you would have to monitor every single person with a litter to make sure they never had a second one. It's completely unenforceable. So that's the problem with that you own. We already have a monitoring system in place for licensing. And so we already have some structure for asthma that if it's per puppy, per lit It's completely I just tried to do some research between yesterday and today to kind of come up with a solution because I agree that 35, when we're talking about this breeding is too many. And so I'm just trying to find a solution. And that said, I have been called to another committee.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Yeah, I was going to suggest in New Hampshire, way they've dealt with this issue, because we too are concerned about puppy mills. We don't want to see irresponsible breeding and we want to make sure that dogs are humanely treated. So we too are concerned in this whole puppy mill issue going on. In New Hampshire, what they did was said any greater than 30 dogs transferred from a kennel, you're considered a pet vendor and you came under regulations relative to selling puppies. So most, like most of the folks that we know, there are some selling of Siberian Huskies but not, that's not the primary reason people have them. They have them to run and partake in the exercise and do the activities that we do. But if you're getting over 30 puppies sold in a year, that's the issue. That's what you want to regulate and control. So New Hampshire's approach to it is anything over 30 you fall under a different category.

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: Well there's two concerns. First, so my background is I was a law professor and I actually specialize in these sort of breeding restrictions. So I looked at the registration throughout The US, around the 50 states. And the problem with every single one where there's a de minimis exemption, which is what you're talking about, you could transfer 29 without being a pet vendor, is that there has to be notification of each of those. There's a lot of research into if you have an exemption without notification regime, everybody cheats because nobody who's not licensed as a pet vendor admits that this is my thirtieth and I'm in violation. Instead, they all say this is my first. So unless you have an oversight regime where they provide notice each time they're using that exempt number, you cannot govern it in any way. In Georgia, they have one litter that's exempt, completely unenforceable. The other part of it is we are also concerned about people who are increasing risk to Vermonters by rapidly increasing the size of their panels without proper care. And so we just had a seizure of 55 Huskies, that a year before were 25 Huskies, and they're all part of a cruelty case and that was somebody who competed The in problem is once those numbers start getting high it gets really easy to tip over into something that is costing tens of thousands of dollars that that owner's not going to end up paying. Somebody has to pay that. We are also, I think, concerned about excessive production, even if it's not being transferred on the market, because it tips over into hoarding into some number of cases, which becomes a public problem. It's differentiating the responsible kennels. I know that there's lot of good sled dog racers in Vermont and good sled dog kennels. From my perspective, I have no interest in negatively impacting them, but de minimis exemptions without some sort of notification just don't work. We don't have, at this point, the ability to set

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: up a full on licensing regime. That's next, I think, then that's your hope to be able to do that in the next couple of years.

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: That would be my hope, yeah. In

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: the this language did continue, I see that you have, you're not counting dogs less than four months. The sled world, after ten years, the dog stops running. So it would be great not to count those dogs that are intact in over ten years because our senior citizens, we just keep them. It's cradle to grave here. We keep them in our pack and they don't don't they don't run and participate in the sled races. But I'd hate to have those counted in this number because that would drive us potentially could drive us over the 35.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: But there's an altered breed. I mean, point of them being intact is to breed. So why would you keep them if they've run for ten years? Why would they still be intact?

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: It's also a cost issue. Sometimes it's dangerous to if you've got any health issues with a dog, it can be dangerous. It can also be advantageous to spay and neuter. We do do that for our females. Some of the males will just keep intact and we keep them separated so that there's no chance of having accidental letters. Our dogs typically live fourteen to seventeen years. They're very healthy. Our vet bills are large. We see our vet a lot and my last year's taxes, we spent over 20,000 in vet bills just maintaining our health of our kennel. So we're very much in touch with our veterinarian and we work closely to manage all of our dogs.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: This is more complicated than, I thought we spent ninety minutes on the floor talking to everyone this morning.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll just put out there, because I know like the decision makers on this are, are is our group over here. I don't have a strong opinion on the number of dogs. It feels a little bit like a Seussical situation of how many dogs is the appropriate amount. And I am concerned that we are spending a lot of time on this, and I don't feel that there is a need to have a limitation to the number of dogs No. In state statute. So I'm wondering She does. I know she does. And by These

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: are professional.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: I know. I'm that's why I started with a bit about who's the decision makers. Yeah. Because while I respect your professional opinion, we represent people, not a policy position. So I think at this point, do think we've spent a lot of time on it. But my only, like, concluding point I would make is we did receive a note from Mike Covey that I wanted to make sure we commented Okay. Great. That was my- As it said. Please don't go under 20.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. And there are others that wanna come in and

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: talk about I would say I would say I do like to take the expert witness as the expert in room. And I would say that we, at the moment, keep it 35. I hear Patty and I hear Ziggy with some dogs, but there are other dog operators don't eat as many dogs. 10 of sled is is is maybe the highest in eat. So I think 35 is a good balance. And I think the 35 intact dogs, I think that they I I think I'm I'm happy to move it with 35 intact dogs because I appreciate that we need to get a handle on licensing. We never had to appreciate how many there are.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: I guess I'm just these are businesses as well. Like, so that's the other thing is the people who have

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: regulate a lot of business.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: I know. And what I'm saying is we shouldn't regulate a business to say you can't have more than 35 horses. Like, there's no law on that. And I think that we know that the amount of work that one horse takes professionally to be a riding horse or whatever. Like, I don't know anything about the dog world, but you would have staff and you would have large facilities and you might have multiple locations. You know? So I hear what you're saying about the individual who escalates from 25 to 55 unexpectedly. I still don't think that we should put a number in statute that would limit a business from properly functioning. The number of dogs does not determine the quality of life of that dog. Then you can sunset it and see how it's working.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I real I really think that when the expert is suggesting to us Okay. That we limit the number of dogs with an objective with all the things that she said so far. I am fully in support. I would have been willing to take it down to 20. So I think

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Well, I defer to the senior center for senior center from Windsor office.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. We're

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: allowed to disagree too. It won't be the first time.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. I'll point out that Lisa had already testified that number is arbitrary and it was only suggested in the house as a number based on what Mike Covey had suggested. Yep. We can move it up or down or we can, as senator White is suggesting, eliminate it. I don't know if there's another solution for curtailing the puppy mill attraction to come to Vermont without some sort of prescription. Exactly. I don't know what that is. I I love the idea of licensing. So if if a dog sled company was licensed, they would be exempt kind of thing.

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: There would be a licensing regime, not necessarily exempt, but maybe based on number of capacity for care. There would be somewhere they report their number of workers and that determines ability to have dogs.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: However we want to fetch it. Yeah. That would leave out the puppy mills because they wouldn't be able to fall into that category. It's just one. I'm I'm torn. I don't really know where to go with it. Well, you could

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: you listen to it and and more testimony, but I'm I'm happy to stay with thirty five.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Patty, do you have any further suggestions for us?

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Yeah, I would ask you to invite some folks in and take more testimony. Jim Blair at Eden Dogsled Adventures would be, he'd be handcuffed by His business is running dog tours for out of staters that come out, out of staters that come to vacation here in Vermont. And he certainly had 60 dogs in the past. He doesn't right now but I know he's planning to ramp up because he needs so many dogs to run the tours. That's his business.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: You just share with us how does a dog run a tour? The dogs pull, they pull the sled. Oh, sled Okay, so they're sled dogs. Got it. Yes. We

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: have people in the tour sleds. Is

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: it Jim Blair, B L A I R?

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: B L A I R, yes.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Would you be kind of to send his contact info to Lynn?

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Yes, I will be happy to do that.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: And I've asked Mike Covey to have whoever else wants to reach out to us to contact Lynn as well. Seems like whenever you put a number in Yeah. I know. I know. You run and and just I don't know.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No. Like, you can always change them. It's that's what we do. Yeah. I just think

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: you change And we could sleep on the bill maybe in the middle of the night we'll all see. You know what we can do? That's the thing.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Mean, again, I do defer to Alison. I'm happy to vote for the bill as it is, but I think I hear exactly what Patty's saying, and I think

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: But we all wanna do the right thing. I mean, there's just and this is the only sort of provision left that we haven't

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: Mhmm.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Come to a decision about. And if there's a way to, again, dissuade those folks that just breed dogs to sell them as fast as they can make them, and yet recognize that we have businesses that depend on large numbers of dogs that will have done a good thing. Yes, Lisa, Can

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: ask a question? Is there any sort of federation or anything that dog sledders belong to that would be a dog sledding federation as opposed to not the AKC, not a general purebred federation. Is there

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Yeah, there are several clubs. There's North Country Mushers Association, which is a Northeast association of mushers all over from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts. There is Yankee Siberian Husky Club. There's Siberian Husky Club of America. So there's several clubs and associations that run-in sprint races, long distance. We're in the long distance race category. There's other folks that do three mile races with teams. I'm happy to put the, you know, get in touch with the leaders of those associations if you'd like to take testimony from those groups.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I don't think we need more than a couple. We're not gonna, with all due respect, make this a career. It's just we'd like to get to a certain point and be able to move this and do the right thing. That's what we're trying to

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: do. Absolutely.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: All right. If you think of anything more, Patty, please stay in touch with Lynn and you know, if there's any other ideas that come up.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Happy to do that and I will think on it and see if I can come up with any creative solutions.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay, great. Thank you very much for your time today.

[Patty Richards (Green Mountain Dog Club; sled-dog kennel owner)]: Thank you very much.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Lisa, anything else? Part of what

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: I was struggling with is if there's a way to have a different number for registered members of this competitive group. I don't know if this sets us up with problems with, Oh, there's this other sport we weren't thinking about. That becomes erratic. Then the other thing is, we are talking about intact dogs. I don't know to what extent they all need a breeding pool of more than 35 intact dogs. Even with somebody who has 60 dogs, some of those dogs they will have already ruled out as breeding candidates. Some of them will have already produced a couple of litters. Some of them will be 10 years old and no longer need. Those all could be altered, could be moved out of the intact category. Exactly. Truthfully, the groups she's talking about have great reputations, like the Eden Dogs group. I've only been in Vermont for a year and I know about them and know that they're a really reputable group. So I think that we would very much not, from my perspective, I wouldn't want to impact them, but at the same time, I think that having some limit and the 35 is what Representative Waters Evans had suggested to her as being something that wouldn't interfere with numbers. Ultimately, it's on-

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Can we just, ceremony, just think about it a little bit more? Yeah, yeah. That's fine. If you have more testimony on it, because there's things that we're not I agree with you. There's probably things that we haven't thought about yet and talk to some other individuals and try to fix it for Alice.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Don't fix it for me.

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: Fix it for the Yeah. Think if I'm I'm

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: reading the code correctly, there might be more desire to remove a number than keep it in.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I'd like to keep a number in because I believe that that this is what Lisa is is suggesting. If we can land on a bigger number, fine. But I think it would be great to be clear that we, you

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: know, what our intent is. I know if Lisa suggested it or that House

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: suggested it.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah, I think they suggested It was the House suggested it.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Oh, so you didn't want to suggest one of limit number of dogs? I suggested that First of all,

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: I was not able to suggest any legislation this year. So when asked for ideas of things that Vermont The thing about on my list was, yeah, one thing to think about is whether or not you want a limit on the number of intact dogs somebody has. I didn't suggest 35.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Right. But you suggested limiting the number of intact, but that

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: would be one possibility to get to the squirrel. Taking you at your word.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: You let them own them.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And it could be 35, it could be 40, it could be 45, it could be 50, but I'd be happier with the number. And this legislature can change its mind and its number every year if they want. Okay.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, I know we'll see you back here at some point.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: See how it works. Now we put sunsets on so that we can see how it's working. Report back. Under report back. How's that working? And then by then, it will have hit all the dog owners, and they'll be all able to weigh in. Because clearly not everybody knows about this being in motion. And and so it would give people an opportunity to weigh in, sort of report it, see how it's doing. And, you know, get a sense of it in a year or two.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Hopefully you're enjoying your year though, you're

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: I am, and other than today, it's been absolutely beautiful out. Oh. Now, it's already in the 90s with high humidity in Georgia, so this is a beautiful

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We need the rain, though.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: We need the rain, definitely. Many of our counties are in drought. I yes. And spiders. Your flowers won't grow without rain. She waters them. Again, she might run dry. After

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: months in Georgia with no rain and 90 degrees and high humidity, here I live basically in a bog, so it's harder for me to I understand that other people do not live in the middle of bogs, but my dogs dug a six inch hole in the backyard because they like Vermont dirt. I like it to be cool. Well, it's a little hole, but it's got a constant pool of water. They use it as their water pools because it just fills with water. It's just water.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: You can't

[Lisa Meilert (Director of Animal Welfare)]: hear it now.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay, well again, thank you. Thank you very much. Anything else that we should take up today, Kim? She did not say that.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So wetlands. We can discuss this.