State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, is the author of Senate Bill 250, an attempt to require taxpayers to either sterilize their pets or apply and pay an additional fee for an “intact” license.
The goal of reducing the number of animals killed in our shelters is commendable, but Florez’s solution — rejected June 1 by the state Senate — has been tried and doesn’t work. Indeed, it may actually lead to more abandoned dogs and shelter deaths.
The number of stray and unwanted pets is startling. However, California has made remarkable strides in reducing the number of dogs processed and killed by animal shelters.
In 1997, 507,000 dogs entered shelters, and 303,000 of those dogs were killed. Ten years later, we had reduced the number of dogs entering shelters by nearly a third and the number of dogs killed by shelters by 56 percent — all this during a decade in which the population of the state increased by 17 percent, and without the coercion of mandatory spay/neuter laws.
Or nearly. In 1994, Santa Cruz County enacted a mandatory spay/neuter ordinance. And sure enough, between 1994 and 2007, the number of dogs processed and killed by the county’s shelters declined. The state as a whole, however, did better, reducing the number of dogs admitted to shelters by 29 percent and those killed by shelters by 52 percent. Santa Cruz County’s population was even growing at a slower rate than the state’s.
What’s going on here? The answer is pretty simple: Mandatory spay/neuter laws simply don’t work in practice. Furthermore, increasing the cost of owning a dog — particularly in the current economic climate — by requiring surgery or an additional license fee will likely lead to more dogs abandoned and killed in shelters.
To Spay & Neuter of our animals is a serious medical choice to be made by consultation with medical experts.
It is claimed that SB 250 is only going to affect those owners of animals IF/WHEN their animals are allowed to be UNSUPERVISED & UN-STERILIZED in public. So instead of a "ticket" being given, the owner the animal is SENTENCED to having their animal subjected to a surgery that is seriously dangerous AND IRREVERSIBLE. [& often de-valuing the animal considerably]
When you get a ticket for a minor traffic violation there are monetary fines applied. But you or your animal are not required to get sterilized.
When you get a ticket for Drunk driving there are incrementally more stringent fines & stipulations applied depending on the number of times. Perhaps Sterilization would be a good choice for those that endanger our loved ones on the road.
Even when a person is found guilty of murder there are degrees of murder that apply to the sentencing....even in cases of sexual abuse, the offender is not sterilized~!
So what kind of convoluted thinking can connect that a dog or cat running loose in public [with all it's reproductive parts] can or will endanger the public?
Biting or attacking another animal or person by an unsupervised animal is a situation that demands immediate attention. And there are existing laws that are brought into play for the animal's owner. But biting or attacking has NO connection to their reproductive capabilities. The unsupervised animal may cause a traffic accident [hardly because of their natural parts] And the owner should be fined for allowing his animal to be unsupervised.
Florez is playing Politics with our animals to gain media time, plain & simple and pandering to the Animal Rights agenda of NO more Animal ownership or use.......that is what bites my intactness...grrrr~!