Going like cats and dogs on the state spay-neuter bill
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Nothing quite seems to inspire passion in the world of animal welfare like the prospect of a mandatory spay-neuter law -- even one as watered down as AB 1634, which just passed the California Senate’s Local Government Committee and is headed for Appropriations. Originally, the bill mandated that most dogs and cats be spayed or neutered. The bill has since been, pardon the expression, altered.
But opponents are still in an uproar. Why? Let’s revisit the thornier issues.
Under the old version of AB 1634, lots of animals were forever exempt from mandatory sterilization: police dogs, service dogs, animals of licensed breeders, etc. But now the bill says if an animal gets cited for a violation a few times, the pet will be ordered spayed or neutered. No exceptions. So, ironically, the tamer version of the bill means that the specter of possible neutering and spaying hangs over any dog or cat -- once it runs afoul of animal control ordinances a few times.
What angers opponents even more is that the complaint or violation that brings an animal control officer to your door could turn out to be bogus. Even so, the officer can (but isn’t obligated to) cite the owner for having an unaltered dog or cat. That citation carries a monetary fine.Get a few citations -- two for a cat, three for a dog -- and your animal has to be altered. Critics of the bill say fining the owner -- let alone forcing neutering or spaying -- criminalizes having an intact animal.
‘Think a service dog would never generate a complaint?’ says a post on the website, Save Our Dogs, which calls itself a grassroots effort to criticize AB 1634 on behalf of working dogs. ‘Try taking a service dog into a restaurant where they are allowed by law. There will be complaints from ignorant and [intolerant] people.’
The bill’s author, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Woodland Hills), says the fact that a complaint can be unfounded and still cost you a fine for something else is not unusual. For instance, a fire marshal could show up at your house to inspect one thing, find you not in violation of that -- but find you in violation of something else.
Opponents of AB 1634 argue that the fire marshal scenario just proves their point that the bill makes having an intact dog or cat a violation of the law.
Levine says not so. ‘Having an animal unaltered in and of itself is not illegal,’ Levine says. ‘In order to have it be illegal, you have to go through a string of things to get there. Somebody has to file a complaint, that complaint has to be investigated and the officer has to cite.’
One interesting point: An animal control officer cannot show up at someone’s house merely to investigate whether an animal is intact. The officer has to go there on a complaint or violation. (And excessive barking isn’t enough.) Levine likens it to the early days of seat belt laws. ‘When it was first written, it could not be cited as a primary offense,’ Levine says. The officer, he adds, had to stop you for something else -- then the officer could cite you for not wearing a seat belt.
‘If somebody started to become the subject of harassing complaints, you might have a legitimate cause,’ says Levine. But he believes opponents are imagining scenarios that simply won’t happen.
‘They’re presuming the day it becomes law that Animal Control is going to show up with a bogus complaint at your door. They don’t have the time or resources to do that,’ Levine says.
The bill, he argues, was designed to give animal control officers a way to crack down on pet overpopulation by targeting reckless backyard breeders and irresponsible owners. Animal Control officers ‘know who the problem people are,’ says Levine. ‘By and large, it’s not the people showing up to protest this bill.’
-- Carla Hall
Times; Alexander Natruskin / Reuters
