Here we go again,,, bad dog law this time CA

Eegads. Good intentions gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to the representatives listed. Feel free to copy/paste anything if you're feeling lazy!

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As a resident of California, I wanted to register my opposition to AB1634, the bill requiring mandatory spaying/neutering of dogs or cats over four months of age without a special permit. If passed, this bill would encourage irresponsible breeding practices - the breeders who produce the best, healthiest animals have very few litters each year and would not be eligible for the special dispensation - which would certainly not lead to "healthy pets" but rather unhealthy, poorly-bred animals unsuitable to be kept as pets.

Additionally, many sources are now suggesting that particularly for large breed dogs it is best to wait until the dog is over 1 year old before neutering so that the dog's bones develop as they should. 4 months is clearly too young an age to be enforcing sterilization.

Furthermore, this bill would severely penalize the responsible purebred breeders and showers. These are not the people who are allowing their animals to run loose and contribute to overpopulation - these are people with a passion for animals, whose business is their animals, and who care very deeply about responsible pet care. Even worse, animals only temporarily entering the state of California, such as for a competition, would not be exempt from this bill. This would effectively prohibit any high-profile animal shows from ever being held in California. Passing this bill in California would be essentially saying to all purebred animal industries in the state, "We don't want you here - please take your businesses to a different state."

While this bill was surely composed with good intentions meant to ensure the welfare of our domesticated animals, in practice it would be a disaster for the economy of the state and for the well-being of its animals.

I hope you will seriously consider voting against this bill.

Thank you for your consideration,

I also live in Cali and I read about this in Sac Bee and online I am a bit confused why so many people are against this bill?
 
I read that registered breeding dogs can still be bred, just for a registration fee.
 
Wouldn't this encourage responsible breeding, if breeders had to pay to have a license to breed them?
 
Because I was thinking that it was a great law, since so many animals get PTS in shelters in California. But now since it seems like alot of you gusy against it I'm wondering if I'm missing something

Raja -

Industrial breeders are exempt.

Also, the young age of 4 months is pretty restrictive.

I do think this bill is well-intentioned, but in practice I only see it encouraging "puppy mills" by making it much, much more difficult for small-scale responsible breeders to continue to function. And as everyone reminds us, responsible breeding isn't profitable anyway, so the added hassle and expense of obtaining permits for every dog you might possibly want to breed some time in the future seems to be an unfair and unnecessary burden, at least to me.

Not to mention that out-of-state show dogs would still be required to obtain a permit, even if only staying in CA briefly for a show. Translation: nobody will want to host a major show in CA ever again.

Plus the costs of enforcement, plus the inevitable corruption and politics involved with who gets permits and who doesn't...

I do think this bill is well-intentioned, but in practice I only see it encouraging "puppy mills" by making it much, much more difficult for small-scale responsible breeders to continue to function. And as everyone reminds us, responsible breeding isn't profitable anyway, so the added hassle and expense of obtaining permits for every dog you might possibly want to breed some time in the future seems to be an unfair and unnecessary burden, at least to me

Yeah, this is the clincher for me.  Maybe if the bill was ammended so that the breeding licenses were cheap and ONLY obtainable by breeders who could provide accurate pedigrees, prove that their dogs have certifications for hips/elbows/whatever, etc...I dunno, just to somehow make it impossible for puppy mills and BYBs to get valid licenses.  But again, the administration of this would probably be impossible. 

Maybe the state should just spend more on "low-pay spay" programs and a PR campaign to have owners speuter their pets?  Our Humane Society sometimes neuters cats for two dollars and we also have C-SNIP all the time that helps, but most people aren't aware of these programs.

This is one situation where I don't see how being proactive as opposed to reactive is going to help.  The stupid people will keep buying puppy mill puppies just 'cause they're "AKC registered purebred" and the respectable people will get overlooked or sqaushed out because of costs.

The way this bill is written out it doesn't make sense, it even contains a typo ("speuter")!! It makes up to punish even the decent breeders. It allows Service Dogs to be intact when SD's should be the first to be neutered. An SD with hormones is not a level headed working dog that could be relied heavily upon by it's handler (whole point of an SD). An intact guide dog walking past a female in season... blind person is literally left to walk into traffic. If a dog is decent enough to use as a breeding dog for SD's it should be removed from working duty & used to breed only. The whole thing needs to be taken back to the drawing board. Go back to the general idea & work from there. In the long run no law is worth anything if there isn't the strength to enforce the law. CA law enforcement & AC can't even enforce the state wide leash law, how they could enforce this is beyond me. 85% of dogs at the park are unleashed. A lot of my neighbors don't even have their dogs licensed, dogs that are unknown & impossible to trace. This is ridiculous IMO.

I have an issue with the AGE they're requireing dogs to be neutered. I, for one, would never neuter a dog before he was physically mature....a year at the earliest, 18 months, even better. Neutering a dog at 4 months scares the heck out of me, for health reasons. Yikes. []

I agree on the age too, I wait 24 months the earliest myself. This thing was just thrown together, the people had no idea what they were doing... grrr