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The below email was sent to me. In response to the first commenter, I haven't seen much evidence that spay/neuter ordinances decrease impounds that much. It sounds common sense but I am not sure if it works in the real world. There are the problems with people knowing about the ordinance and enforcing it.
Same with TNR. There are quite a few small studies of small populations over a few dozen to a 100 acres or so that seems to indicate it does work if there isn't a lot of dumping. But it is by no means a slam dunk.
LA, despite increasing spay/neuter programs and education about the issue has suffered roughly the same impound numbers over the last four years.
I think the greatest impact would be to gradually regulate breeders out of existence and highly discourage selling any kind of live pets at pet shops. Dogs and cats aren't the only animals dumped. Adopting them through rescues there is a different story.
Anyway, the email:
For the past two years the Kern County euthanized pet numbers have been steadily on the rise. The only people with the authority to change this situation is our local public officials.
While some have valiantly stepped up to help, others have worked against us for years:
Supervisor Don Maben and his Animal Control Commission have worked very hard to make sure that Kern County will never have a mandatory spay/neuter pet protection ordinance, (the only proven method to date to reduce pet overpopulation and the high numbers of dead pets).
Supervisor Maben is very adamant that a mandatory spay/neuter pet protection ordinance will never be implemented in Kern County, and he has successfully turned his back on the plight of discarded pets in our community for the past two years.
The Kern County Animal Control Commission members have stated that they will fight our Kern County Board of Supervisors to ensure that a mandatory spay/neuter pet protection ordinance will never be put in place and that such an ordinance is not appropriate for Kern County.
WE MUST SEND E-MAILS TO OUR KERN COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS REQUESTING THE RESIGNATION OF SUPERVISOR MABEN AND HIS ANIMAL CONTROL COMMISSION MEMBERS:
board@co.kern.ca.us
Please e-mail our Animal Control Commission and ask them to step down since they have never stepped up to help the discarded pets of Kern County:
www.animalcontrolcommission@co.kern.ca.us
For more information:
http://deadpups.blogspot.com/
12 comments:
Ed wrote:
"mandatory spay/neuter pet protection ordinance, (the only proven method to date to reduce pet overpopulation and the high numbers of dead pets)"
I must be late in the game, but how did you ever come to this conclusion? How do you explain San Mateo County implimenting MSN and then repealing MSN when it failed? (Failure as defined by number of animals taken in/euthanized and not budget related stuff such as decreased licensing and increased expensese)
There was more to the story of San Mateo and would appreciate people including all the info instead of taking things out of context to make their point. If you want a good example of spay/neuter sponsored by government just take a look at San Bernardino County. And in addition go back a few years look at the numbers overall and you will see drastic reductions across the board. What do you contribute this to if not spay/neuter. If you have been in this game long enough, there would be no doubt that spay/neuter works. If you have common sense you can easily figure out that spay/neuter works.
Previous commenter. Why don't you give an overview of San Mateo? Did it fail? Why? Why did not a S/N law not work there, and if it did, would not the same problems that made it fail there make it fail here?
If you are going to offer a broad opinion, please explain it more.
It does NO GOOD to say you are more experienced than others because that puts people off. You have to give facts, perspecitive, overview to support your claim---if you want to get people to understand and eventually be convinced of your viewpoint.
Going back more years for LA to see the large decrease, why do you think S/N caused the decrease or why increased S/N has not caused a decrease in four years? If you can't explain better than saying "what do you attribute that to if not S/N?
Does San Berbadino have license laws? Are the shelters refusing animals now as with LAAS during peak months? Are ACOs not going into the filed now and trapping animals when they may have done that years ago?
Are the shelters refusing to rent traps anymore? Are they refusing to accept animals coming in in traps?
Have rescue groups been able to adopt more before the animals reach the shelter or rescue more after they are impounded?
Have educational programs increased the public's knowledge of what happens to turn ins?
There are several alternative explanations for fewer impounds other than S/N.
Give some reasons why you think it is primarily S/N.
How is mandatory spay/neuter supposed to work without easily accessible low-cost S/N options for pet owners?
If mandatory spay/neuter will work to reduce the numbers of animals killed in shelters I'm in favor of it. But the kind of people who de-prioritize getting their animals spay/neutered, and who furthermore allow their animals either to roam or mate with other unaltered animals in their home (and yes, I'm assuming here, but not without experience) do not seem like the kind of people who have a spare couple of hundred dollars that they're going to now earmark for spay/neuter.
This is how opponents of mandatory S/N defeat us- because we don't present a plan, we present an idea. Mandatory S/N is a great idea, but we can't prove voting for it will make one iota of difference, because we have no plan to implement the thing we say is mandatory.
If statistics seem to indicate that more people would spay/neuter if they had low-cost (presumably local) options for doing so, why aren't we figuring out a way to get that done? I understand it's not going to save dogs and cats who are CURRENTLY in shelters, and we need to find ways to save them too, but the REAL cost of spay/neuter, as opposed to what vets can get for it, has got to be much cheaper than incarcerating, feeding, cleaning up after, and ultimately killing an animal.
BTW, why on earth is the government INCENTIVIZING killing animals? Of course Hayden can't work if the shelter makes more money killing than adopting. Whose monstrous idea was it to pay shelters to kill animals?
1. Does San Berbadino have license laws? Are the shelters refusing animals now as with LAAS during peak months? Are ACOs not going into the filed now and trapping animals when they may have done that years ago?
2. Are the shelters refusing to rent traps anymore? Are they refusing to accept animals coming in in traps?
3. Have rescue groups been able to adopt more before the animals reach the shelter or rescue more after they are impounded?
4. Have educational programs increased the public's knowledge of what happens to turn ins?
1. San Bernardino does have license laws for dogs. They have never refused any animals presented for relinquishment. The ACO's do trapping. The County has household limits of four dogs and four cats.
2. Yes, SB does rent traps, does take ferals, and allows their spay/neuter fund to do ferals. If you request a trap, an ACO will come out and place it for you. You call and they will pick up.
3. SB County has an excellent relationship with several really good groups. Many groups in the IE do not take animals from the shelters at all. The SB head of AC has developed a program to reward the good groups who work well with the shelter by offering money if they get so many animals out in a month.
4. The County has provided humane education for a number of years and the Humane Society in SB is in the schools everyday with a full time humane educator.
Prior to the spay/neuter program, every year was showing an increase at the shelter. With the amount of people population growth that SB has experienced in the last 10 years, the numbers are even better than they look on paper. SB County also has an adoption trailer for outside adoption events almost every weekend.
Forgot to add that SB used the Social Services to get info on spay/neuter programs out to the ones who really need the help, the ones drawing welfare checks. They were even allowing more vouchers to be sent beyond the code allowance of animals to a household (they have stopped doing this recently). Service calls have also been reduced and when you have a combination of a reduction in impounds and a reduction of service calls, then you consider a spay/neuter program to be successful. Otherwise the service calls will remain the same, indicating that the field officers are slacking off, thereby accounting for the reduction in impounds.
Just checked with SB County AC and learned that there was a 20% increase in the use of the spay/neuter vouchers last year. Last year the licensing fees were raised to $96 per year for an unaltered dog. And AC will give you a voucher for $50 and turn the other cheek for 2 months to give people a chance to alter before licensing. This is a good incentive, and incentives are necessary. They also have put on 6 more licenses checkers for enforcement of the licensing laws this past year.
This is the latest quote on San Mateo in the Bakersfield Californian on March 15, 2008. San Mateo had problems because of their neighbors not participating in the same program, not to mention they didn't really need it. Besides this was debunked awhile back during the AB1634 fight. Get up to speed here.
Is mandatory spay neuter needed everywhere?
Scott Delucchi of the Peninsula Humane Society will tell you “No.”
In 1991 Peninsula Humane, which handles animal control duties across San Mateo County near San Francisco, got the country’s first mandatory spay neuter ordinance passed in the county and two cities.
Other cities in the county didn’t join the movement and, after a couple of years, the Humane Society gave up trying. Today, Delucchi said, his organization does little to enforce the law.
“If a person comes to the shelter to pick up a lost animal, that’s where the rule is enforced,” he said.
With an annual intake of around 9,000 dogs and cats and a 100 percent adoption rate of adoptable, treatable, healthy animals, there is little need for mandatory spay neuter, Delucchi said.
Last time I used one, the vouchers from LAAS were only worth $30. It was nice, but if I hadn't been committed to getting my cat neutered, $30 wouldn't have pushed me over the edge.
They should try offering people $100 vouchers. They should hit up everybody who comes in to surrender unwanted puppies or kittens, and they should distribute flyers with info on both the voucher AND local participating vets.
Scott Delucci euths a lot more animals that other shelters would not.
Many of the euthed animals are falsely listed as sick, non-treatable, behavior problems, etc. He is pulling the usually crap that many falsely claimed no-kill shelters are doing. I think I remember his kill stats were about 25-30% as opposed to a no-kill definition of 10%.
Besides, a 9,000 impound shelter is quite small and therefore closer to the community.
Remember, Marcha Mayeda with regard to County, claims that 91% of the adoptable dogs are placed, and 89% of the adoptable cats, yet she kills 77% of all cats.
She is a frigging liar just as is Delucci.
So, it is obvious that if it disagrees with any of you, you automatically go into that "they lie", "they are the ones who kill animals" "holier than thou" mode and start slinging crap. Rarely do I see anyone on this blog who believes there are two sides to a story. And this blog represents why we can't get any further along because no one is willing to work together, look at the failures, and learn from those mistakes.
The problem is that the anti mandatory spay neuter camp is the breeders- the AKC and its people (they are in the puppy mill registration business,) the puppy mills breeders, the dog fighting breeders, and the rest.
For these people this is business, income. They hire professional lobbyists to sling mud about any law that breeders see as affecting their income.
Lobbyists that that issue forth an endless stream of noise, propaganda, fibs that they try out to see if they'll fly. Every business lobby does that.
Well, the animal breeding business is no different. This is big money. Businesses don't like to be regulated.
Especially businesses that haven't been on public record and are hiding out. And even many of these small breeding concerns are raking in the big bucks without having to bother about things like taxes.
They get licensed and suddenly all that business activity is somewhat more apparent. Like the ones who insist they are not running a puppy mill, but are.
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