Either your dogs and cats are really, really dumb, or you are just extremely lucky. It's like ingenious toddlers -- if you haven't had one of those two-year-olds who will drag a kitchen stool across to a cabinet, stack books on the counter, and stand on them to open the cabinet and get at the door key in a magnetic box under the coffeemaker on the top shelf, you just don't understand. My son did this - he's now a U.S. Marine where he can put his ingenuity to good use, but he gave us a lot of gray hairs and near heart attacks.
My dogs and cats sit around all day long scheming to get out the door. Occasionally they succeed, although they don't as a rule get very far. However, my 14 pound Blue Point Attack Siamese used to push screens out of upstairs windows and climb down a tree, from whence he would terrorize all the neighborhood dogs until I retrieved him.
The issue at the heart of the legal case in Louisville was whether animal control could enter homes and seize animals without a warrant and require seizure bond. Some pet owners had to relinquish pets to AC because they couldn’t post seizure bond only to be later acquitted in court. By that time their animals had been dispersed or euthanized.
Dogs are intelligent creatures. Some will lay in wait for an opportunity to break free of their enclosure. I’ve had guests & delivery people leave my gates open and my dogs have gotten out. I have small dogs that few people would regard as a threat.
The Louisville law could have been applied a little with a little more consideration of the fact that the dog was instantly recovered and nobody got hurt.
The principle of owner responsibility is important, so if this is a one-off event it seems that the JP should have cut the guy a break. Animal control sure won’t.