California to mandate cat/dog spay/neuter

[asterroc]

If you or anyone you know lives in California, you may be interested in the proposed Healthy Pets Act, AB 1634. This act would require all owners of cats and dogs greater than the age of 4 months to have their pet spayed or neutered. The purpose of the law is to reduce the number of stray and unwanted shelter animals, and to reduce the spread of disease via animals.

One very big con is the impact on service dogs (such as seeing eye dogs and police dogs) - trained working dogs are exempt from being fixed, however (1) the parents of working dogs (other than farm dogs) are rarely working dogs themselves, so special licenses would have to be obtained to breed service dogs despite the apparent exemption for working dogs, and (2) service dogs are not trained until well after 4 months of age, so even should a training school wish to breed a retired service dog, s/he would already be spayed/neutered. If I lived in California I would lobby/vote against this act based upon this fact alone.

Pro
http://www.cahealthypets.com/

Con
http://saveourdogs.net/ab1634.html

Rhode Island already has a similar law.

Comments

[weirdlilfaechld.livejournal.com]

I disagree, from the studies I've seen breeding a pair of retired service dogs doesn't increase the chance of getting puppies that are suitable for service dog training. Over 60% of the service dogs I have personally met have actually been from shelters. Also, the site against the bill is using mostly outdated or simply unproven statistics on how neutering affects health.