On the demise of a terrible bill

Thank you, thank you, thank you, State Senator Gloria Negrete McLeod, for driving a stake through the rotten heart of AB 1634, the so-called "Healthy Pets" Act. The name is dead and the bill is, too:

A completely revised AB1634, now co-authored by Senator Negrete McLeod, Chairman of the Local Government Committee, can be found here.

Under this version, there is no mandatory spay and neuter, except as a remedy for dogs about whom complaints, which cannot be barking dog complaints, have been made to animal control. Presumably this would include loose and roaming dogs but would be more inclusive. At the third complaint for dogs, the owner would be required to have the dog altered at his expense. Further the fines for complaints are increased. Many of us would agree that a dog that is constantly roaming the neighborhood is probably not owned by responsible dog owners.

At a minimum, Senator Negrete McLeod has removed the dangerous health effects of early spay and neuter.

The question has also been raised about whether the bill can be turned back into its former language. The answer to that is that with Negrete McLeod as a principal co-author that will not happen. [Source]

Contact information for the Local Government Committee can also be found at the CDOC site. More coverage: Pet Connection, Save Our Dogs, Capitol Weekly, and of course an announcement from Judy Mancuso.

AB 1634 may not have been the most pathologically dishonest campaign in the history of legislation, but it was certainly up there. Here is a link to posts I wrote about the bill.

Nathan Winograd, in an article opposing AB 1634, wrote:

Better to kill a bad bill, than to kill the dogs and cats its proponents are willing to sacrifice at the altar of punitive legislation, diverting scarce resources away from lifesaving programs, diverting attention from their own failures, and reaching the national limelight.

AB 1634 richly deserved its demise.

What follows is a post I wrote a year ago, an open letter of sorts to bill supporter Patt Morrison of the L.A. Times:


Patt, I've been a fan forever. You are a smart, brave, big-hearted woman, and I love you for looking out for lost and unloved dogs. But your take on AB 1634 was a huge disappointment.

Reporters are supposed to be demons for research and crusaders for truth, and that may be a joke for many but I never thought it would be a joke for you. You haven't read the bill, Patt. You don't know enough about dogs to understand why people like me oppose it, and you couldn't take the trouble to find out.

Pity, because if AB 1634 passes, the shelter situation is going to get a lot worse.

You rail about "all those backyard puppy mills churning out defective Dalmatians or border collies or whatever purse-sized dog happens to be hot. My vet took in an abandoned puppy-mill Chihuahua — Scooter, born without front legs because of overbreeding."

AB 1634 sanctions all that. Puppy mills get a free pass. Any chucklehead willing to jump through the hoops will be able breed his dog, and it doesn't have to be a temperamentally sound dog or even a particularly healthy one. (We know there won't be any hip dysplasia screening.) Inbreeding? No problem! And California pet stores will go right on selling misery puppies born by the hundreds of thousands in Midwest puppy mills.

This store just opened not far from me. Are you cool with that? AB 1634 is.

You wrote,

I'm one of those who cleans up your messes. Every dog I've rescued and found a home for is one you flicked aside like an empty Arrowhead bottle [...] I'm tired of cleaning up after you. California is tired too; its cities and counties have no room or money to keep all the homeless kittens and puppies, all the old dogs and cats you allow to overbreed or leave out on the street like an old refrigerator. And so they have to kill them.

Patt. This bill won't stop a single Californian from relinquishing a dog because "we're moving" or "he barks" or "I'm having a baby." And the mouth-breathing dropout who chains his poor pit bull bitch in the garage and breeds her on every heat is not an L.A. Times reader.

That dropout doesn't know AB 1634 exists. He doesn't license or vacccinate his dogs now, and he won't get them neutered if this bill passes. The dogs he produces --- pit bulls and pit bull mixes --- make up 80% or more of the dogs in some California shelters and the great majority of dogs euthanized in the state. Last year in L.A., 39% of the dogs euthanized were pit bulls or pit mixes. (Those rescue organizations you support? Not a pit bull in sight.)

Bay Area and OC rescues make regular runs to the Central Valley in search of non-pits for people to adopt back home. Some people like to say that 25% of the dogs in our shelters are purebreds, but what they don't say is that most of those purebreds are pit bulls.

Patt, I know all this because unlike the great majority of people wringing their hands over the plight of shelter animals, I have a pit bull. In fact, I have two --- both adopted from the local pound. I've supported pit bull rescue for twenty years.

AB 1634 won't make a single Californian adopt a pit bull. (Have you adopted one? Thousands of wonderful pit bulls need good homes.) AB 1634 will encourage -- no, it will mandate -- careless breeding. It will not make dogs healthier. It will not save the state a cent.

What AB1634 will do is sanction "just one litter;" force many law-abiding Californians to neuter their dogs before it is best for the animal; allow puppy mills and pet shops to flourish; and create such a burden of veterinary paperwork, criminal background checks, home inspections and record-keeping that our already overworked and underpaid ACOs will have no time left to play testicle police.

You write: "The objections to Levine's bill run from the selfish to the ridiculous."

Not if you've read the bill, Patt. Not if you've read the bill.