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Effective Letter Writing & Finding Government Officials
With the internet, finding your local, state/province or national government leaders is a snap.
Go to a major search engine such as www.yahoo.com or www.google.com and do a search for the city/town, state/province and government. For example, if I were searching for the officials for Prince George’s County, MD government, I would go to Yahoo and type in: Prince George’s County MD government. One of the first sites that comes up under the search is the county home page where I can find the government officials.
Effective letter writing should be educational and non-confrontational. Insulting, threatening, etc., only makes officials think that they are correct in assuming only “certain types” of people will own breeds they wish to ban.
In your letter, give a bit of background: introduce yourself. Give your opinion and an educated opinion regarding why bans fail. Illustrate with a short anecdote that any dog can be a risk if pushed far enough. Ideally try to keep the letter to one page typed. What I do is keep a “stock” letter saved that I customize for each individual community, county, state/province or even country I address. Another helpful bit is to send references, quote research, etc. If you are quoting a newspaper or news report stating that there is a BSL in the works, let the government know that this is where you got your information. Why? Well, news reports may be incorrect. It is not uncommon for me to contact government officials and then find out that the report was wrong and they are going to address the issue of dangerous dogs but have not considered restricting any breed in any way at that time.
Again, be educated and not insulting. You do not want to give any more ammunition to the fire!
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