Californians to have dogs and cats spayed or neutered

Friday, June 8th, 2007 by Elle Woloszuk 0 Comments

0 Comments

According to Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer for the San Fransisco Chronicle, the Californian state Assembly passed a bill Wednesday night that would require Californians to have their dogs and cats spayed or neutered, or pay a $500.00 fine. Although neutered males are calmer, less aggressive, and do not roam as much, there are some concerns with the bill:

“The bill has got some holes in it,” said Don Griffin, a Peninsula veterinarian. “In theory it’s a nice idea, but implementing it and regulating it is going to be difficult. Enforcement is certainly going to be a hard issue. It’s got a little bit of Big Brother in it that I can’t get behind.”

Yollin is quoted as writing: “The bill also poses problems for public safety and disaster preparedness, said Mark Herrick, a search-and-rescue dog handler with the California Rescue Dog Association and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue K9 Unit. He noted that 95 percent of search dogs come from home and hobby breeders who won’t be able to get an exemption.”

“It will be difficult to impossible to find good-quality, genetically sound working dogs,” Herrick said. “If we don’t have good dogs who can work eight to 10 hours a day to go through the rubble, how many lives will be lost? Only the puppy mills will be breeding dogs — and they breed really crappy dogs.”