Every cat and dog deserves a safe, loving home.

I frequently see posts on Nextdoor from people who have found lost cats and dogs, trying desperately to locate their owners. Sometimes they're reunited. Other times, nobody ever seems to come forward.

It got me thinking about how much more we could do here in Ohio, not only to reunite lost animals with their families, but to encourage adoption, make responsible pet ownership more affordable, help families keep their animals, and reduce abandonment and neglect.

I'm asking Ohio's Republican and Democratic legislators to work together on comprehensive companion animal welfare reform.

This petition isn't demanding one particular bill or claiming to have every answer. It's proposing an initial framework that our elected representatives can study, debate, improve, and turn into practical legislation.

1. Tax Breaks for Responsible Pet Owners
Ohio should explore income tax deductions or credits that help families afford adopting and properly caring for cats and dogs.

Qualifying expenses could include adoption fees, veterinary care, vaccinations, medications, and other basic necessities.

To discourage abuse, an initial proposal would limit these tax benefits to two qualifying pets per household, without restricting how many animals someone may legally own.

The purpose is to encourage responsible adoption and ongoing care, not reward people for collecting animals.

2. Tax Breaks for Landlords Who Allow Pets
One of the obstacles to responsible pet ownership is finding affordable housing that permits animals.

Instead of simply forcing landlords to accept pets, Ohio could offer meaningful tax incentives to landlords who voluntarily provide pet-friendly rental housing.

Landlords should also have effective legal remedies for legitimate property damage caused by animals, with appropriate protections against inflated or fraudulent claims.

This could make more rental properties available to families with pets while respecting the legitimate financial concerns of property owners.

Ohio legislators have already explored this concept through the bipartisan Pet Friendly Rental Act, House Bill 277, introduced in 2023. We should revisit and build on those efforts.

3. A Voluntary, Connected Statewide Pet Registry and Recovery Network
Ohio should explore a simple, affordable statewide companion animal identification and recovery system that works with existing microchips, county registration systems, and animal-welfare organizations.

Importantly, we don't necessarily need to build everything from scratch.

There are already excellent services doing some of this work.

Petco Love Lost offers a free national lost-and-found database with photo-matching technology, pet alerts, and information from participating animal shelters and social platforms, including Nextdoor.

Pet FBI, which was founded in Ohio in 1998, also maintains a free nationwide lost-and-found database with searchable reports and automatic matching alerts.

These services provide a valuable foundation for what we're proposing.

Rather than creating an entirely new system that duplicates their work, Ohio could examine ways to integrate, coordinate, or support existing services while addressing gaps in animal identification, verified ownership records, and public accessibility.

A more connected statewide system could:

• Allow owners to voluntarily register their cats and dogs and associate their profiles with existing microchips.
• Provide easy, verified ownership transfers when animals are adopted or rehomed.
• Let owners mark animals as missing, upload photographs, and update their status.
• Allow residents to report found animals, including those without microchips.
• Provide searchable lost-and-found listings and notifications for missing animals in a person's area.
• Offer optional rewards for the safe return of missing pets.
• Allow owners to temporarily make selected contact information public while their pet is missing, or communicate privately through the system.
• Help shelters, veterinarians, county agencies, and participating recovery networks share appropriate information.
• Registration in any new statewide recovery program should be voluntary, with meaningful benefits that encourage participation.
• Existing Ohio dog-licensing requirements would remain in place.

Privacy protections would be essential, particularly where registry information intersects with government records.

The idea is to make the systems we already have work better together, reduce unnecessary duplication, and make it easier for Ohio residents to help animals find their way home.

4. Better Funding for Shelters and Responsible Rehoming
Sometimes people genuinely cannot continue caring for an animal. Financial hardship, illness, housing problems, and other circumstances can make rehoming necessary.

We should make responsible surrender easier than abandonment.

Ohio should explore using appropriate registry fees, voluntary contributions, and other funding sources to support animal shelters, foster programs, and adoption services.

The registry's fee structure should help sustain these services without making participation unaffordable for families who need assistance.

Someone who responsibly asks for help rehoming an animal should not be treated the same as someone who deliberately abandons or abuses one.

5. Accountability for Neglect and Abandonment
Ohio already has laws against animal abandonment and cruelty. Better identification and ownership records could help authorities investigate violations and hold responsible parties accountable.

But we must consider unintended consequences.

We don't want to create a system that makes an irresponsible owner more afraid of being caught than willing to surrender an animal safely. Nor should someone face automatic suspicion because their pet escaped or went missing.

The legislation should distinguish between deliberate cruelty, accidental loss, and responsible surrender, with reasonable safeguards and due process.

Our objective should be preventing animal suffering in the first place, not merely punishing people after it happens.

A Bipartisan Opportunity
There are legitimate questions about the cost of tax incentives, registry administration, privacy, fraud prevention, landlord protections, shelter funding, and how existing services could be integrated.

Those questions deserve serious consideration.

We're not asking lawmakers to ignore the costs or unintended consequences. We're asking them to work together, hear from Ohio residents, shelters, veterinarians, rescue organizations, landlords, and other interested parties, and determine how these ideas could become workable legislation.

Animal welfare doesn't need to be a partisan issue.

People who care about responsible ownership, personal freedom, property rights, tax relief, family stability, and the humane treatment of animals can find common ground here.

Our long-term vision is an Ohio where every cat and dog has the opportunity to live in a safe, loving home.

Let's explore ways to make adoption and care more affordable, reunite more lost animals with their families, protect responsible owners and landlords, strengthen our shelters, and reduce the number of animals abandoned or left homeless.

I encourage anyone who shares that goal to sign this petition, contribute ideas, and help bring the issue to the attention of our elected representatives.

We don't need to agree on every detail to agree that we can do better.