Bad news for doggy day cares. Apparently, they’re breaking the law.

The New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is reinstating a little-known and rarely-enforced regulation. Under that regulation, no resident can board, feed, or groom someone else’s pet for money without a proper license. Those licenses, by the way, cannot be granted to private residences; they are limited to permitted kennels.

Julien A. Martinez, a spokesperson for the Department of Health, said in an emailed statement that the law is meant to protect animals from neglect. “These regulations do not apply to the average New Yorker who may pet sit for friends, family, and neighbors,” he added. In other words, a pet-sitter is not breaking the law if they do not charge or accept money for their services.

The law has been on the books for years, but the Health Department did not enforce it unless they received a complaint. However, the rise of pet-sitting apps such as Rover and Wag have forced the state to take a closer look at violations.

Last October, Health Department general counsel Thomas Merrill sent a letter to Dogvacay.com (which has since merged with Rover), ordering it to confirm that its new users have licenses before signing them up. The site has yet to comply.

In the meantime, the Health Department has started cracking down on unlicensed apartment residents using the app. At least two apartment residences have received violations for caring for pets without a permit. Fines start at $1,000.

Rover, which has over 9,000 registered sitters in New York City, intends to fight the law.

“If you’ve got a 14-year-old getting paid to feed your cats, that’s against the law right now,” Rover general counsel John Lapham told the New York Daily News. “Most places right now continue to make it easier to watch children than animals, and that doesn’t make any sense.”

City Council’s health committee chair Corey Johnson agrees with him, and is reportedly planning to introduce legislation overturning the law.

“There are millions of cats and dogs in New York City, and people I think believe they can pet sit or have someone pet sit for them,” said Johnson. “To have a law on the books that says that’s illegal is antiquated and not practical.”

This is not the first time New York has clashed with emerging “sharing economy” apps. Click here for more on the state’s clash with Airbnb, and here for Uber’s struggles to get a foothold in New York City.

Delaney Cruickshank

Delaney Cruickshank is a Staff Writer at Law Street Media and a Maryland native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in History with minors in Creative Writing and British Studies from the College of Charleston. Contact Delaney at DCruickshank@LawStreetMedia.com.

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NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover detected changing methane gas levels on the much-talked-about planet, spurring reports this week of the possibility of life. According to Sushil Atreya, a member of the rover team, “This temporary increase in methane–sharply up and then back down–tells us there must be some relatively localized source…biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock.” This is great news for the many hopeful applicants to Mars One, the human colony project slated for 2024.

Click here to read Mankind is Mars-Bound: All the Facts on Mars One.

NASA is very clear about one thing: the discovery of fluctuating Methane levels does not mean that there absolutely life on Mars, but rather that life is one possibility among many that could account for this activity. According to John Grotzinger of the rover team,

That we detect methane in the atmosphere on Mars is not an argument that we have found evidence of life on Mars, but it’s one of the few hypotheses that we can propose that we must consider. Large organic molecules present in ancient rocks on Mars is also not an argument that there was once life on ancient Mars, but it is the kind of material you’d look for if life had ever originated on Mars.

This is not the first time that scientists have made a discovery like this one. Smaller methane fluctuations have been detected several times over the last several years, and the team was able to tap into the “hydrogen isotopes from water molecules that had been locked inside a rock sample for billions of years,” the analysis of which added to knowledge of martian water on Mars.

This illustration portrays possible ways that methane might be added to Mars’ atmosphere (sources) and removed from the atmosphere (sinks). NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected fluctuations in methane concentration in the atmosphere, implying both types of activity occur in the modern environment of Mars. Courtesy of NASA/JPL -Caltech/SAM-GSFC/Univ. of Michigan.

Law Street writer Madeleine Stern wrote an in-depth explain about the Mars One program that I highly suggest you read in light of this new information coming out of NASA. Mars One, the brain child of Bas Lansdorp and Arno Wielders, is a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands that is working toward colonizing Mars. The colony, slated to be established in 2024, will be filled with selected individuals who will make the one-way trip after a three-round selection process to weed out the competition. The first round of Mars One applicants are going to be trained for their life on Mars beginning in 2015, with aspects including physiotherapy, psychology, and exobiology–the study of alien life.

So while we wait for more answers to the questions of what the latest Mars methane discovery means and where it is coming from, you can still throw your hat into the ring to become one of the planet’s first inhabitants. Or hey, at least you can buy a $50 sweatshirt to offset the projects $6 billion price tag.

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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