While voting on bylaws concerning pets in Weyburn, the councillors took a "paws" for discussion during Monday night's meeting of the City Council.

Weyburn City Council gave the first reading to the bylaw that would amend the city's Cat & Dog Bylaw back on October 23rd. The bylaw was then tabled to the meeting held Monday night for the second and third readings before being passed. 

The changes involve the number of cats and dogs permitted in a household. The bylaw previously read the limit was three cats, three dogs, or any combination thereof, per person. The bylaw was updated to read the limit was per household. Other changes included wording around dangerous animals, and what to do in the case of an issue with something like a barking dog and the owner isn't home. 

With the bylaw introduced back on the floor for the second reading, councillors commented on the bylaw itself. Councillor Laura Morrissette noted that while it is important to keep bylaws up to date, she had concerns about the number. 

"The only thing I have a little bit of hesitancy about is the number of, exactly of, animals per household," Morrissette said ahead of the vote. "It seems a little low, but I understand that there's some other reasoning behind why we're doing these, and how it's being enforced."

Councillor Jeff Richards agreed with Morrissette and added his own thoughts. 

"I think three might not be the right number for a lot of families, but we do have to pick a number, and three seems like a good one."

While he agreed the number was too low, Councillor Ryan Janke pointed out there isn't a perfect number, and that he trusts the enforcement and judiciary branches to take care of these things. 

"Many numbers are arbitrarily selected," Mayor Marcel Roy added to the conversation. "Look at our speed limits that we discussed years back - it was a risk to raise and it was picked to be lower. There's a different variety of different numbers."

While the concerns were raised, the councillors ultimately had no objection to the bylaw, and it passed unanimously. 

The Cat & Dog Bylaw wasn't the only one discussed by the council during the meeting. They also passed changes to the Fire Services Bylaw that was initially introduced on October 9th, passed a zoning bylaw for a property at the intersection of Prairie Avenue and 2nd Street to rezone it as residential instead of commercial, introduced changes to the refuse bylaw that include language changes and definition updates, and passed a bylaw that makes a slight change to the route snowmobiles are allowed to take within city limits. 

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