.
From Nathan Winograd's blog:

California’s proposed mandatory spay/neuter law is all but dead. This is not news to anyone who has been following it. But it is good news for the animals. The question is: for how long? As proponents shift focus from the state to the local level, AB 1634 will continue to rear its ugly head.

And in light of the fact that there has been the first increase in the kill rate of animals in over a decade since its passage in the City of Los Angeles, animal lovers have much to be concerned about. Especially since shelter killing has not only increased, it has skyrocketed.


While leadership of Los Angeles Animal Services tries desperately to blame home foreclosures for the increased killing, the numbers—as usual—do not add up. According to the people in the trenches, an increase in impounds and killing is largely the result of officers telling people that “if you give me your dog, we won't write you a ticket” [for the sterilization law violation].



These animals enter death row at Los Angeles Animal Services, and then these individuals go out and get another animal (and not from a shelter). The law harms animals on two fronts:

increased impound and killing, and an increase in the market for backyard bred animals.

As seen time and time again, mandatory sterilization laws are largely a distraction, increasing the power of animal control to impound and kill yet more animals, while they divert resources from programs that do work so that agencies can hire yet more officers to write yet more tickets—or threaten to do so—to no avail. While proponents seek to punish the public, they only end up hurting the animals.

I’ve said this before: in a democracy, animal lovers are free to believe whatever they want. But believing something doesn’t make it so, and never will. Meanwhile, animals continue to be killed in appalling numbers and reform efforts are squandered on an agenda that has no hope of achieving success. Moreover, the animals are paying the ultimate price for the false beliefs of animal activists. They are the ones being slaughtered en masse because of it. With animals being killed every day in shelters because shelter leadership has not embraced the programs and services of the No Kill Equation or a culture of caring and accountability, activists must move beyond the empty hope that mandatory sterilization will ever be anything but a failure.

Look at what the animals in the Los Angeles city and county shelter system must endure.

(City of Los Angeles Animal Services) Take a look at a dog being violently handled on a control pole. Click here.

(City of Los Angeles Animal Services) Take a look at the callousness by which a dog is killed and then heaped into a trash bin. Click here.

(Los Angeles County Animal Control) Take a look at a puppy slowly dying while staff socializes. Click here.

(Los Angeles County Animal Control) Take a look at a rabbit desperately trying to drink from an empty water bowl, forgotten in a back room. Click here.

(Los Angeles County Animal Control) Take a look at cages deliberately kept empty to reduce the amount of work staff has to do, while animals are executed as a result. Click here.

(Los Angeles County Animal Control) And then take a look at a puppy, a young, friendly puppy who entered healthy, was made sick, and then was left to die; while shelter staff are oblivious to or unmoved by his plight. Click healthy, made sick, left to die.


This is not unique to Los Angeles. Look at the green algae covered water bowls that dogs have to drink from at a shelter in San Bernardino County. Click here.


Look into the eyes of a kitten scheduled to be executed simply because he came in a feral trap and without review or handling was classified as “unadoptable.” Click here.


Look at the puppies, huddled in a corner, the only “clean” spot left in the kennel; puppies who will be killed for parvo-virus because shelter staff are sloppy in their cleaning and handling, and because shelter leadership refuses to vaccinate. Click here.


This is your shelter system.


This is what your tax dollars are supporting.


This is where the animals in violation of your laws go to die.


And that is what we should all be fighting to end.