My family have always gotten their pets fixed.  I have a dog now that isn't only because he was a stray and we don't want his owner showing up (if he indeed had one) and getting mad at us for permanently altering his dog.  I don't know how I feel about the government telling me that I have too get my pets fixed or else.

The government has had to step in many times to tell people to be responsible. How many people remember riding in cars without seatbelts as children? Or bicycling without helmets? Or seeing their baby brother or sister in the car without a carseat? All of those items, designed for safety and protection were around for an awfully long time. Now most folks gasp when they see babies not in carseats, or kids bouncing around in cars without the protection of a seatbelt.

Pet ownership is a responsibility. Having your pet altered is a very small piece of that responsibility that can alleviate a large social problem.

The problem I have it that this puts the government into my personal business. I agree that if I had a dog that got loose and the pound caught it, I should have to pay to get him out but I don't agree a law should be made to force me to fix my dog.

I was not in favor of the helmet law for motorcycles or bikes or the seat belt law either, except in the protection of a child. When is it that me not wearing a helmet invades your rights? If I don't wear a helmet it is my choice and if I crash and die or become a crippled then it is my fault.

Where will it stop? When are we going to say stop invading my rights to the government.

I have to agree with you weeblesl.   Seemed a bit unconstitutional at first, but like you said sometimes the government has to step in to protect us, our children and our pets.  I can't believe how many homeless dogs are running around the Tehachapi area as well... it's so sad.    And what can we do about dog breeders?    Shouldn't they be held to a more responsible standard as well?   People if you can't afford a pet or you don't want to take responsibility for them...  DON'T GET ONE.   Sheesh.

 

I agree with Jeremy on the Helmet law.. I was against it and still am.    But that is my life we are talking about, not the life of innocent puppies.  OK let me think about this issue a bit more.

The reason helmets and seat belts became an issue was because a number of people who were not insured were not wearing them, then getting injured. Without insurance, it then became a societal problem, as the taxpayer is bearing the cost of your hospitalization and recovery.

In many ways, it's the same with pets. When you don't spay/neuter your pet, other people are forced to deal with the fallout...especially those who have to do the euthanizing.

I'm not posting to change anyone's mind on the subject. I just wanted to provide those who care about the issue a chance to get involved.

Don't get me wrong I understand why the laws are there but disagree that I should be babysat as an adult. While I was in the Navy I was a Hospital Corpsmen and saw and treated those injuries myself. I also personally wear a helmet regardless of the law because I feel safer, but disagree with being forced.

The animal issue itself is a little personal due to the number of cats in my area. I agree it is not the animals fault for the owners they have but if I have an animal I should be allowed to make the chose if I get them fixed or not.

I guess my biggest problem with any of these laws is the fact that they take the rights away from the honest and responsible citizen. I feel that if we continue to allow these law to take our rights away then what would stop the government from taking our other freedoms like speech,  press, religion and guns under the guise of safety or lack of responsibility?

Assembly Bill 1634 looks great at first glance, but it's going to harm the very people who are dedicated to protecting and promoting dogs.  This Bill requires every unaltered dog to have a special permit at a cost decided in each jurisdiction.  This could cost the show-dog owner hundreds of dollars every year.  That is punishing people for participating in conformation shows.  The Bill makes it a civil violation to own any dog over four months of age who has not been sterilized.  Four months is awfully young to put a puppy through such a surgery.  Many veterinarians will not perform sterilization operations on such young animals.  The Bill does not allow an exception for dogs traveling into the state for competitions.  Will the PETA-HSUS police raid dog shows and levy fines?  California communities make billions every year from dog shows and their ancilliary businesses.  We can kiss that revenue goodbye.

Unwanted pets are a national disgrace.  People who, by ignorance or apathy, allow their pets to reproduce unchecked or people who, for greed, deliberately breed poor specimens, and then take no responsibility for those lives created, are scum.  Any reasonable laws that punish those people should not also punish the responsible breeders.  This Bill attacks the people who can recite generations of their bloodlines.  It attacks the people who fund medical research from which your pets benefit.  It attacks the people who live with the responsibility for every life they produce.  This Bill is like the government putting a boot on your car because the guy down the street drives recklessly. 

The Tehachapi Mountain Dog Fanciers oppose AB 1634.

For people dedicated to showing dogs, an additional fee would be absorbed into the the overall costs of showing. To say that a law shouldn't be enacted because of the very small percentage of the dog-owning population who show seems a bit extreme. Currently over 25% of the dogs that end up in shelters are, in fact, purebred animals. You don't want to have to pay for an exemption. I don't want to have to keep paying to euthanize healthy animals. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

As far as the age of the puppy or kitten, while four months old may seem young, it is actually a very reasonable age for neutering. There are many veterinarians who perform spay/neuter surgeries at eight weeks of age, and do so successfully.

Having an exemption in the law specifically for breeders hardly seems like "punishment." 

Why should responsible people who are not contributing to the overpopulation disgrace be penalized with trumped up fees and charges?  Hobby-breeders are the backbone of the dog world.  These people do not make money off their dogs.  These people are lucky to break even when they sell puppies after deducting the cost of veterinary bills, food, travel and entry expenses to competitions, training, grooming, and stud fees.  A dog or bitch is not bred before they are at least two years old and have been tested by OFA, CERT, BAER, and whatever other congenital problems may occur in the breed.  Most are not bred before three years of age because it takes time to finish a championship and then the breeder has to research bloodlines and decide which is the best animal to breed with theirs.  It's not a simple decision.  Dogs should only be bred to improve the breed. 

The offspring from these planned, monitored breedings do not find themselves in the local pound.  Those poorly-bred purebreds are from the backyard breeders and puppy-mills.  You can see their ads in the classifieds.  Call a couple and ask about their bloodlines, what the parents were tested for prior to breeding, and what is the focus of their breeding program.  Ask about their purchase agreement.  The backyard breeders are allowing a couple purebred, possibly puppy-mill, animals mate without regard to how it will improve the breed.  Backyard breeders couldn't care less about your problems after they get your money.  We get calls all the time from people who are stuck with poorly bred animals and no support from the crummy people who brought those animals into the world. 

Like you, weebles, I don't want to keep paying to kill healthy animals whose only crime was to be born for lousy, scummy people. 

Get rid of the backyard breeders.  Get rid of the puppy-mills.  Don't impose extra fees on the dedicated, responsible, hobby-breeders who already give their time and cash to their dogs for the love of it.  The hobby-breeders are not the problem, and they should not be forced to bear the brunt of other people's actions.

And another thing...I attended the dog show this past weekend in Bakersfield.  If you want to see a lot of dogs rescued from bad circumstances just cruise the overnight parking at a dog show.  Most RV's have a rescued dog among the carefully-bred canines because people who care about dogs will fall in love with a hard luck case.  Almost every breed's parent club has a rescue division and they will respond to take their breed out of the shelters, even if it is a poorly-bred dog with temperment problems.  These are also the people who contribute to medical research that may save the life of your pet.  Do you know about the genome mapping that has been done to identify where certain diseases can be found in the genetic structure?  Your housepet may have already benefitted from the science that hobby-breeders have funded.  Again I ask, why do you want to force these people to pay for society's ills?  

How do you propose we separate the backyard breeder from the reputable one? Is there some list available?

Gosh, one idea might be to have the reputable breeders have a permit. Like they ask professional contractors to have a license so you can tell them from the unlicensed "handyman" offering similar services. I do not believe that places an undue burden on the contractor any more than I believe it places an undue burden on the responsible dog breeder.

I do not understand why you think that any of the points you made about the good that responsible breeders do would be affected at all by having a permit. I believe they would continue to do the same good works as they have. You seem to think that I am placing everyone in the same category. I'm not. I'm saying the breeders who are truly into it for the love of dogs, rather than the thrill of fast profit, will obtain the permit because in doing so they will make it easier to spot the irresponsible ones.

The way true professionals in several other fields obtain proper credentials to separate themselves from the riff-raff.

The thing I don't understand is that we're on the same side on this issue, even if you don't believe it.  We both want the irresponsible backyard breeder and the puppy millers of the world to be stopped. 

I'm supporting a bill that help make that happen. If you have a better way to really make an impact on this issue, I'm all ears. If you just want to keep telling me I'm wrong, while failing to offer another workable alternative, we're just going to keep dancing in circles.

I was at the dog show as well this weekend. They need to mvoe the flyball competition to a bigger spot next year. Watching them alone was worth the price of admission :o)

I am going to have to agree with weebles on this comment "Gosh, one idea might be to have the reputable breeders have a permit. Like they ask professional contractors to have a license so you can tell them from the unlicensed "handyman" offering similar services." It makes perfect sense to me.

I have 5 cats; all of them rescues; I wouldn't have any of them if someone hadn't been irresponsible and all of them fixed upon my own belief that there just to many unwanted pets out there. No one forced me and I did get a little help from the humane society for my last two; but it's worth the cost of having it done to me, just to know, I am not contributing to the unwanted pet population.

I have 2 dogs both pure bread and I have their bloodlines back 3 generations. The female I had flown in from Oklahoma just so I wouldn't cross the bloodlines so I could breed them eventually. I got some information about the breed from books and watching the dog shows and decided when they were about 6 months old not to breed them and had both of them fixed, just because they had some faults that I felt were not good to pass along to puppies. So now I just have 2 dogs who are pets which is fine with me but I am glad I didn't become a "handyman" dog breeder. I know to many people who do it and don't know anything about the breed they raise, they just do it for profit. I just wanted to point out that some of us regular folks do act responsible and take it upon ourselves to pay out the vet costs. I support your bill Weebles and after this post I am going to write our assemblyman.

 

P.S. Weebles do you send the letter to the Sacramento or Bakersfield address?

The registering for an intact permit is incredibly objectionable, as is the enormous cost.  The entire enforcement of this bill will be paid by the permit fees.  How many hundreds of dollars, every year, do you think a person should pay to have a working or competing animal?  Have you read the bill? 

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/p...

Let's go over what else will be affected.  It allows trained, working police dogs to retain their testicles; how do we propose to get from 4 months old to "trained and working" age?  Click our heels or blink our eyes?  How will the puppies be allowed to develop into possible police-dog candidates with gonads attached?  This will require police departments to 1) import their K-9 officers and 2) have each one completely trained before they come into the state.  How much will that raise the cost of the K-9 units?  The SAR units?  The Arson units?   

 What will happen to the breeding program of seeing-eye dogs?  They are now breeding a mixed mutt jokingly called a labradoodle.  The bill requires intact animals to be purebred and listed with an approved registry.  So much for working dogs of unregistered heritage.  Do you think those dogs moving the sheep around our hills are purebreds?  What will happen to the signal (hearing assistance) dogs?  Most are selected from shelters based on aptitude testing.  Will those training programs be forced to buy purebred dogs?  How much will that drive up the cost of an assistance dog?

This bill plays right into the dirty hands of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).  These groups are working to remove our pets from our homes. 

(Our local Tehachapi Humane Society is not affiliated with the HSUS.)

LuvMyKatz, you can send letters to either address. The Sacramento address is probably the address where they will be seen soonest, since they are up there working, but the Bakersfield address is their "hometown" address. I actually sent letters to both, just to make sure they got counted.

TK --- I have read the bill. Do you honestly think I'd just willy-nilly ask people to support something I haven't read? No amount has been determined in regards to the permit fees, so the idea that it will automatically be "hundreds and hundreds of dollars" has no traction.

The bill allows for guide dog and service dog exemptions. And as far as the Labradoodle argument goes, like you said...they are purposely-bred mutts. I have no problem with people not being allowed to purposely breed mutts they then charge obscene amounts of money for. And they are not asked to pay state sales tax on the money they receive for their dogs, nor do they have to obtain a business license, like other people who make money in the county are required to have. 

As far as assistance dogs, people receiving the dogs do not pay for them at all, so there is no cost increase to the end user. And, as much as some of us would like it to be true, there will always be shelter dogs to choose and train for the tasks you mention.

Finally, I feel I have to ask again. You continue to list reasons you believe this is a bad measure, yet I do not see you proposing any other alternative. I believe in my heart that we are in agreement regarding the pet overpopulation issue. What is your alternative to solving this issue?

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

                                                                      --- Franklin D. Roosevelt