Kara Carrero

Our family participates in small-scale agriculture by raising livestock on our farm in Belknap County. Our livestock guardian dogs are not pets, and they are not merely a convenience. They are a critical line of defense for our animals, and they operate on a level of threat perception that no human can replicate or fully understand. That is not a weakness in our system. That is the entire point. One night our dog barked for a long stretch and we called him off repeatedly but he continued to return to bark. From our side of the fence there was nothing to see, no movement, no obvious threat. It was not until the next day that a neighbor told us he had been watching on the other side (his side) of our fence and watched coyotes moving along the perimeter while our dog tracked and warned them off. Our dog knew something we did not. Without a witness account or without any way to document what was happening in the dark on the other side of a fence, that night could have been a punishable offense under this bill. Our dog would have been penalized for doing his job perfectly. This is not unusual. Our dogs consistently bark at one specific delivery truck that comes by almost daily while ignoring every other truck of similar size. We believe it is something in the engine or brakes, a frequency outside normal human hearing range, that our dogs register as a threat. We did not train them to make that distinction. They made it on their own. We have also watched our dogs lie down quietly near sick animals before we had any indication that something was wrong. These animals perceive a world we cannot fully access, and that perception is inseparable from their value. Which brings me to the central problem with this bill. It assumes that the behavior it wants to restrict can be modified while leaving the dog's core function intact. It cannot. You cannot train a livestock guardian dog to ignore predator threats and still have a livestock guardian dog. That instinct is not a bad habit. It is the entire reason the animal exists. Attempting to condition it away does not produce a quieter working dog. It produces an expensive, large dog that stands by while your livestock are at risk. The bark is not a side effect of the job. The bark is inherently a part of the job. In researching the instincts of livestock guardian dogs, you will find that urinating around a perimeter and barking strategically are two ways that these dogs work so that they do not have to fight off a predator. Fighting is typically their last resort, but functions such as barking typically help keep most predators at bay. This bill is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of what these animals are, and every specific provision reflects that misunderstanding. Mandatory LGD registration singles out farms unfairly. Requiring farms to register a dog specifically as a livestock guardian dog creates a tiered class of animal ownership that targets agricultural operations for special scrutiny and restriction. This country has a painful history of legislation that singled out specific groups for separate treatment, and that history should make us cautious about any law that marks one segment of our community for a different set of rules. Farms are active contributors to our local economy and our agricultural heritage. Placing undue burdens on them does not just affect farm families like ours, it affects everyone who depends on local food production and rural land stewardship. This is a slippery slope, and farmers should not be the ones standing at the bottom of it. The definition of "predator" is unworkable. As in my example of the delivery truck, the bill does not account for any of this, and it cannot, because the range of what a livestock guardian dog perceives as a threat is precisely what makes them effective. You cannot legislate a list comprehensive enough to cover what these animals already know instinctively. The burden of proof is placed on the wrong party. Requiring a farm owner to document every instance of predator presence in order to defend against a complaint is not realistic. As my own story illustrates, the threat is often invisible to us. That is not negligence. That is the nature of predator activity and the nature of what these dogs do. Barking cadence is never defined. Is the limit per dog or per property? If one dog barks for eight minutes and another picks up for eight minutes, is that a violation? The bill does not say, which makes enforcement arbitrary and opens farms to complaints that cannot be consistently or fairly adjudicated. This bill conflicts with existing law. RSA 466:31.II.(b) explicitly exempts dogs guarding, working, or herding livestock from the sustained barking provision. That exemption exists because legislators already recognized that livestock guardian dogs operate differently and serve a function that cannot be held to the same standard as a neighborhood pet. Applying a tighter restriction to the exact use case the existing law protected undermines the clear and deliberate intent of that exemption. The current law already handles this correctly. RSA 466:31.II.(b) protects livestock guardian dogs rather than restricting them, and that is exactly where the law should remain. I do not support HB1133 in any form, and I ask you to oppose it entirely and without compromise. Respectfully, Kara Carrero