The sources
Where to read dog laws yourself
State codes, bill histories, municipal codifications, incidence maps and agency pages: the primary sources this journal reads, and the method it reads them with.
Every fact this journal prints was read in a primary source, and most of those sources are open to you with the same click. This page lists what the desk reads, names the publishers, and writes out the method, because a reader who can check the work is the whole point of printing citations. Nothing here is a partnership and nothing here is paid: a source earns a line by being the text that decides.
The codes of the states
Each Southern state publishes its code, and the published edition is the text this journal cites; a commercial republication can lag behind it, and when the two disagree the official text wins. Mississippi's code carries the dog sections this site reads section by section, and the entries of every neighboring state live in their own published editions. The standing scoreboard built from those readings is the comparison table.
The history of a text
The legislature's bill status site publishes each session's bills with their histories: filings, referrals, amendments with their own numbers, floor votes with their counts. It is the only text that settles what a bill said and whether it lived, and it is the reason this journal distrusts bill stories that carry no number and no session. The machinery those histories describe is walked in how a bill becomes law.
The Animals article of your city
Most municipalities publish their code through a codification service, and the Animals title is the shelf that matters to a dog owner: definitions, running at large, nuisance, vicious animals, impoundment, penalties, in that order most of the time. The codification date the site displays is part of the reading; the printed code follows the council by a few weeks, always.
The health maps, with their years
Two publishers carry the parasitic load of the region. The American Heartworm Society runs the triennial incidence survey built from clinics and shelters reporting cases; the 2025 survey was published in April 2026, and it is the only source behind this journal's heartworm statements. The Companion Animal Parasite Council publishes county level prevalence maps, updated continuously, for heartworm and the tick borne diseases. A health figure on this site always climbs back to one of them, and the climb is shown at heartworm incidence data.
The rulebooks of the sports
The registries that administer dog sports publish their regulations and their title lists, and those rulebooks are primary sources for anything this journal prints about event formats and the letters around a dog's name. The published rule is the text; a club's local custom is not.
How the desk reads
The method is six moves. Find the primary text, which means the publisher's own site, not a summary of it. Read the whole section, exceptions included. Record the citation exactly, section or decision and page. Date the reading, and print the date. Mark what the text does not say as silence, never as an answer. And correct in public when a later reading moves an earlier one; the correction rule in force is on the editorial policy page.
What locates against what cites
| Kind of source | What it is good for | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Official code edition | What the law says | Cite the section as printed there |
| Bill status history | What a text said and whether it lived | Carry the bill number and the session |
| Municipal codification | The rule at your address | Note the displayed codification date |
| Incidence survey and prevalence maps | The health of the region | Name the publisher and the year, every time |
| A law firm's marketing page | Locating a section fast | Never cited; the code is opened instead |
What this page is not
It is not a directory of every source that exists, and it holds no external link of any kind: the names are printed, the opening is yours. When a new publisher earns a line, it enters the same way every fact does, by being read first at the source and dated on arrival.