Compromise?

Your Whole Pet: Can the two sides of mandatory spay/neuter find common ground?
by By Christie Keith, Special to SF Gate, July 24, 2007.

Great article about what to do with AB 1634, the California mandatory spay/neuter law that is on hold til January, except for one thing - Keith assumes that both sides want to find common ground. While it's fine to say that generally, people on both sides of this legislation love animals, it's not so fine to say that we have the same interests in this law. There are definately some who are completely opposed to breeding cats and dogs and want to ban breeding totally, and it could be that these people are the driving force behind the legislation.

Keith is correct that both sides want to reduce shelter intakes and shelter euthanasias. She suggests approaching the problem as a public health issue. Rather than try to eradicate a problem that we cannot eradicate (i.e. there will always be some people who need to turn pets over to a shelter), reduce the problem to a manageable level. Keith uses the example of teen pregnancy and how although we haven't eradicated the problem, we have decreased the numbers of teen pregnancies. Another example Keith sites is needle exchange programs for drug addicts.

"That's because anyone who sets out to entirely eradicate a problem that involves human or animal behavior, especially as regards sex and reproduction, needs to accept that you'll never completely control the behavior you're seeking to influence. There will always be pregnant teens, and there will always be pet owners who, through lack of will, lack of valuing the human/animal bond, or genuine circumstances that can't be fixed, need to avail themselves of animal shelter services. We should just accept that, and develop programs based on that acceptance."

Keith's suggested policies are:

"There are two ways to lower the number of shelter deaths. One is to lower the number of animals coming into the shelter. To do that, you need programs that target the reasons animals are coming into shelters in your location. For example, if a community has large numbers of feral cats, efforts can be aimed at managing feral cat populations using trap, neuter, and release programs. If large numbers of dogs being turned into local shelters are rambunctious 2-year-old, jumping, barking, leash-pulling Lab mixes, then things like training classes for new adopters, behavior hotlines and counseling services will have the most effect.

Another way to lower numbers of animals coming into the shelter system is to support voluntary spay/neuter programs. Low-cost, easily available spay/neuter surgery, financial incentives to alter pets, and the requirement that all pets released from shelters be altered before placement can all help reduce the number of pets who end up in shelters in years to come."

All of this is good. I agree completely with Keith's suggested policies. The problem is that the other side does not necessarily want to decrease breeding pets. Some on the other side want to completely eradicate it. Consider the position on abortion that some Democrats take - make it safe, legal, and rare (meaning prevent unwanted pregnancies before they happen with sex-ed and contraceptives). The pro-life side will never settle for that; they want the practice of abortion eradicated completely. And the animal rights activists will not stop until breeding cats and dogs has been banned completely. Unfortunately, I think it is these people who push the hardest for legislation like AB 1634 and thwart attempts at compromise.

Keith's article is a good one; her policy suggestions are sound, her stats are sound. My only issue with the article is the assumption that both sides want to compromise and find common ground.

Review of NPR story by Brian Mann

On July 21, 2007, NPR had a story entitled "Stray Pets: A Complex Problem" by Brian Mann. You can listen at NPR.

What the piece boils down to is a very inflammatory conflation of hoarding and pet overpopulation. This is nothing short of the type of sensationalistic journalism that Rita Skeeter would write. The reporter uses the gut-wrenching tale of a case of hoarding to make you think that this sickness is part of pet overpopulation, then uses Wayne Pacelle (the head of HSUS) to single out pet stores and commercial breeders as a source of the problem. The connection between hoarders and pet stores is implied, much the way a certain President and his VP ... ah well, that's a political discussion. But this reporter really used sensationalism to implant the idea in his listener's mind that commercial breeders are hoarders and therefore cruel to the animals and so nobody should buy from them. The reporter failed to mention that hoarders do not sell their animals, that's why they are called hoarders. He did not discuss the mental health issues around hoarding, just tried to imply the connection between the animal control issues around hoarding with pet overpopulation.

Here's a rough transcript, I recommend listening for yourself, it's not a long piece:

too many dogs & cats in the US

every day 11K euthanized

CA considering a mandatory pet ster. law

meantime, activists are trying to find homes for animals that otherwise would be put to death

Reporter is Brian Mann

follows a law enforcement guy outside Houston going to a hoarder's home for a rescue of more than 50 dogs and a bunch of cats

describes the rescue of the Jack Russel terriers, they are in very poor condition and the situation is dire, the owner agrees he needs help, he never meant to collect so many

reporter: "scenes like this are shockingly common in the US, daily occurences for animal control officers"

Wayne Pacelle says hoarders are only the most graphic symbol of what he describes as a dog and cat overpopulation crisis

Pacelle: "there are probably about 4 to 6 million euthanized ..." every year

vast majority are abandoned by normal pet owners

"You turn the animal over to an animal shelter or animal care agency and think that animal is going to be adopted, that's not always the case. Healthy and adoptable animals are euthanized for lack of space and because you just run out of options."

reporter: "this reality has sparked fierce debate within the animal rights movement"

interview changes to a foster care worker

Melinda Little in New York: "for me euthanizing is not a choice, I do think it is wrong"

reporter says Melinda is part of a foster network

we hear a small kitten meowing, she describes socializing the fosters

Little acknowledges that the number of strays can be overwhelming, the local shelter where she is a board member has a no kill policy but is often so full they have to turn animals away

Little says that if it's a "animal living in a very cruel environment vs. being euthanized, maybe that would make sense"

reporter: Some progress has been made. In some parts of the country, s/n programs funded by donations and local govts. have cut the euthanasia rates in half.

Pacelle says the next step is convincing more people to adopt pets from shelters rather than pet stores or commercial breeders

Pacelle: "only about 17% of owned dogs come from shelters, if we can get that number up to 25% or 30% we could solve the pet overpopulation problem in this country for the most part in terms of dogs."

the problem with cats is trickier because stray cats form feral colonies populated by animals too wild to be adopted.

back to the dogs rescued near Houston, they have a fighting chance for survival.

the officers delivered the dogs to a vet near Houston, the entire pack is infested with parasites

gruesome description of the hookworms and how the dogs are sick from them and being "eaten alive"

once the JR Terriers (made popular by Frasier) are healthy, they can be adopted out

the lt. describes the mental stress that goes with doing the animal rescues, not being able to sleep, etc., he has another 40 cases pending, and 100 more that he has just begun to investigate.

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Okay, now exactly what do the horrible animal cruelty cases that law enforcement has to deal with have to do with what Pacelle and Little said? They're talking about animals in shelters, and the LEO that Mann follows around is dealing with instances of animal cruelty. This seems like a major non-sequitor to me.

Yes, hoarders are bad. Yes, I feel really bad for the LEO's and vets that have to deal with animal cruelty issues. But I don't see the connection between those problems, and spay/neuter and adopting pets from shelters rather than buying them.

First Blog Post

One of my favorite columns in any daily online newspaper is Dan Froomkin's White House Watch in the Washington Post. Dan does a daily commentary on what's going on in the White House with a good overview of what other media sources are saying. So I'd like this blog to be similar but with the main topic of Pet Law, or legislative activities from around the country dealing with pet issues. My background is the cat fancy, so I'm going to miss a lot of things dealing with dogs, but I'll keep trying to expand. Occasionally, I'll go back and pull up old information that people seem to have forgotten. Much more to come!