Animal Welfare
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The Idaho Humane Society’s Animal Care and Control Division is on duty from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week. To reach our dispatcher, call 208-343-3166. Calls are answered until 6 pm.
For after-hours emergencies or major holidays, call the Ada County Sheriff’s Dispatch Center at 208-377-6790, and a Humane Officer may be dispatched to respond.
Due to the high volume of calls we receive, you may have to leave a voicemail with a telephone number where you can be reached. The dispatcher will call you back as quickly as possible. If you are requesting that a Humane Officer be dispatched to a location, you must provide a street address. The various city municipalities require that a first and last name must accompany each report and thus, no reports can be made anonymously (to our Officers), however in many cases, the name will remain in our database and will not be made accessible to the public.
How Animal Care and Control works in the following situations:
Barking Dog First Complaint
Barking Dog First Complaint (with no prior complaints within the past year):
We will request your name and address for our records, along with the specific address where the barking is occurring, as officers cannot patrol neighborhoods to locate barking dogs.
A Barking Dog letter will be issued, giving the owner 30 days to address the issue. Complainant information is kept confidential. Owners often contact us after receiving the letter, allowing us to discuss the concern further and gather additional information.
Barking Dog Second Complaint
Barking Dog Second Complaint (within one year): A second complaint may be filed 30 days after the letter is issued, and no later than one year from that date.
An officer will then contact the dog owner directly to discuss the issue and issue a second and final warning.
Evidence:
After this 2nd dog warning is issued, complainants may gather audio evidence if they wish to pursue a formal complaint (citation). To meet “nuisance” criteria, barking audio must be:
- Continuous for 30 minutes, with few interruptions of 20 seconds or more; or
- Periods of continuous barking with few interruptions of 20 seconds or more equaling one hour within a 24-hour period of recording.
Recordings must be provided on portable media, such as a thumb drive. Audio files are sufficient and are smaller in size. Links from home security camera companies may not be accessible on our computer systems, so these will need to be downloaded onto appropriate devices.
A Supervisor will review the submitted evidence. If it meets the outlined criteria, a citation will be prepared for your signature and served to the dog owner. It is then submitted to the Prosecutor for their consideration.
As an alternative, two unrelated affected households may file a joint complaint, but both parties must provide detailed statements about the times and duration of the barking.
The Prosecutor’s office will notify you if any further information is needed. You may need to testify in court, though this is not common. The Prosecutor’s Office has sole discretion as to how the matter is settled.
Animal in a Hot Car Complaint
Animal in a Hot Car Complaint: We will ask for your name to include in our database. We will dispatch a Humane Officer and if we discover a dog or other animal locked in a hot car, we will not divulge your information to the offender.
If you, the reporting party, are still on-site when we arrive, you may choose to file a complaint against the owner. Otherwise, citations are issued at the discretion of the officer.
Animal Welfare Concerns:
Our Process
We will ask for your name to include in our database. We will send a Humane Officer to check the conditions at the location provided.
- If we verify the information you provided, and it meets the criteria to warrant a citation, we will issue the citation and if necessary, seize the animal(s) and place them into protective custody; we will not divulge who notified us of the complaint.
- In less severe cases, at the Officer’s discretion, a warning may be issued followed by a return visit to assess compliance with our instructions to improve the situation.
- A valid telephone number will assist us if we need to clarify information to assist with the investigation.
- Please keep in mind, that if the investigation requires a search warrant, one cannot be obtained upon anonymous information. Again, we do not divulge who gave us the information to the other party, but later a defense attorney will be given that information as a matter of law.
- In the event that a case goes to court, the defendant’s attorney may request the reporting party’s name. We may be compelled by the court system to divulge the complainant’s names.
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