FILE - Lavender the dog, animal abuse survivor, seen in March 2025

A police car.

E.C. Stumpf with Lavender. He is fostering Lavender.

E.C. Stumpf with Lavender. Stumpf is fostering Lavender.

FILE - Lavender the dog, animal abuse survivor, seen in March 2025

Lavender the dog, animal abuse survivor, seen in March 2025.

NEW YORK STATE — A French Bulldog named Gus died, and numerous other dogs and cats were removed from Halfmoon’s A Time For Paws in June.

The owner of the dog boarding and daycare facility is accused of keeping the animals in extremely hot rooms without water.

In March, Lavender, a pit bull, was found critically injured with missing fur and starving on the side of the road in Schenectady.

Lavender the dog entered the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society on Thursday with an abundance of energy, making her hardly recognizable compared to …

These are just two of the many animal abuse cases recently in the Capital and Hudson Valley Regions. The cases have led to more officials seeking local animal abuse registries and a push from Sen. Jim Tedisco for a statewide list.

Albany County was one of the early adopters of an animal abuse registry, doing so in 2011. A review of the registry run by the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society shows more than 40 listed individuals, with the latest addition stemming from an August 2024 conviction.

“We are huge proponents” of animal abuser registries, said Humane Society CEO Ashley Jeffery Bouck.

But while many communities maintain registries, Bouck says even she wouldn’t know how to check all of them to see if someone is an animal abuser.

“I know Sen. [Jim] Tedisco is pushing for a statewide animal abuse registry, which would be fantastic, so that no matter where you are, in New York State, it just all fed into one area that we all had access to. I don’t know all the counties that have them and I don’t know where their registries are housed.

While the Humane Society keeps the Albany list, in Rensselaer County, the district attorney’s office houses the registry, Bouck said.

“It would be extremely beneficial to have access to it and for everyone to be educated that it’s there. It is to prevent animals from going into homes of people, who should by law, not have them.”

Tedisco is pushing for both a statewide registry for animal abusers and a law that would prevent someone convicted of abusing an animal from ever owning an animal again.

“County registries are a step in the right direction, but we need a holistic registry of convicted abusers on the state level because an animal abuser can just go to a neighboring county that doesn’t have its own registry to get an animal,” Tedisco said in an emailed statement Friday.

Counties are on their own

Until a statewide registry is adopted, though, local municipalities are faced with creating and implementing their own lists.

Greene County did so in July 2021, and Columbia County approved one in September. Fulton County voted to establish one on July 14, and Brett Eby, a candidate for District Attorney in Saratoga County, is now pushing for the creation of one........

© The Leader Herald