When’s the last time you, your husband, and your dog decided to take in a Broadway show and a dinner in NYC? Well, your dog might have to wait out the show part of the night back at the apartment, but be sure to add a third to the reservation at Sardi’s. NY health laws are poised to allow dining with your dog in outdoor cafes as early as July of 2015.
Assemblywoman, Linda Rosenthal, a democrat from Manhattan, is sponsoring the measure in the Assembly. If the law passes, will we see Alpo-ala-King on menus soon?
The law proposes to amend an existing health law in New York that dictates, ‘no live animal shall be kept, housed or permitted to enter into or remain in any food service establishment or non-retail food processing establishment.’ For more on the health laws as they pertain to animals in or near NYC restaurants, go here.
The law won’t be the first in our country. Florida and California already allow pet owners to take their dogs to outdoor cafes.
But The measure is not without its opponents. The NY Health Department’s
Christopher Miller recently told the NY Daily News, “The Health Department loves all dogs, but just not at restaurants where they can create a risk to the health and safety of diners, restaurant workers and other dogs.”
So what are those risks? Our doctors at Animal Medical of New City agree that whatever they are, they are minimal and can be divided into two areas: risks that are posed to other animals and risks that are posed to people
If your pet dines with you at a restaurant where another dog is not on a regular flea preventative or is infected with any kind of skin parasite, then your dog is at risk of exposure. Additional concerns would be the transmission of respiratory infections from one dog to another or the possibility of you carrying those pathogens, if they existed, on your hands or clothes to the dogs that you have at your home. Again our doctors underlined that these concerns are small. The annual bordetella vaccination we provide all patients at Animal Medical of New City and the year-round flea preventative we offer should be sufficient to provide your pet the protection it needs.
And what about the risk to human health? Provided that dogs are not allowed to touch areas of the restaurant where food is placed (tables, serving trays, and utensils obviously), then the risk that these dogs would pose to human health would be the same that they posed to ordinary pedestrians on any New York street.
For it? Against it? Let us know on Facebook! To reach out to Assemblyman Richard
Gottfried on the matter, you can find him on Facebook or reach out to him on the State Assembly page.