All,

I have a situation for which I can't seem to find any relevant statutes. Our animal control supervisor doesn't know what to do with the dogs of mental health emergency detainees. If this were a short-term issue, I don't think there would be a problem, but he is wondering what to do in the case of something more prolonged.

I've looked in the Health and Safety Code and Family Code, and nothing seems to apply directly. Can anyone help point me in the right direction?

His email to our office is below:

We are having to pick up dogs from people that are being taken into custody under an emergency detention for various mental health reasons. Sometimes we have to go into their home and remove them if there is no one else there to care for them and other times they are out and just have the dog with them and we impound the dog just as the vehicle would be impounded. Once we do this what is our legal obligation for holding the dog? Often times these people are taken away and placed in hospitals all over the area and we have no way of contacting them or getting any information about their potential release or their condition. If we do know where they are taken we cannot get any information about them from the hospital for HIPPA reasons. I can’t even legally have them “surrender” the dog to us as they are not in any condition to sign any documents that would hold any water. So we take the dog into custody and then what? How long to we have to hold them? Can we ever “legally” do anything with them? Often we have rescue groups that are willing to take the dogs but I don’t know if we can legally release them. We just had one that we picked up on 9/21/24 that I finally gave up and released to a rescue last Friday cause I felt bad for the dog being in our kennels for 6 weeks. If the owner ever comes in and wants to know where their dog is, I will deal with it at that time I guess but at some point it becomes unhealthy for the dog to be stuck in a kennel forever and I made the call to release it. We have had many instances of this type of thing and I can’t get anyone to tell me what we are supposed to do in this situation. I am more than willing to help these people out who are going through some stuff and would love nothing more than for them to get their dog back, but we have to draw the line somewhere. We do not have the space in our shelter to board dogs indefinitely with no idea as to whether the owner is ever going to come for the dog or not. What do we do? If we pick up a stray dog, according to Texas law after 72 hours it becomes the property of the County. Does this law apply to this situation? If not 72 hours, how long? Please let me know what you think. I really need to get some clarification if I possible. I want to do what’s best for the dog as well as the owner, but I also want to protect the County. Thanks!