LA County Releases Details of Mandatory Spay/Neuter Proposal [Wednesday, April 05, 2006]
The Los Angeles County Animal Board of Supervisors will meet April 18th to discuss their proposal to require all dogs to be spayed or neutered unless their owner purchases a $60 intact animal license (currently $30) and meets the stringent criteria established by the county. The measure further requires all dogs, whether sterilized or intact, to be microchipped and increases the fee to license a sterilized animal from $15 to $20. A first violation will result in a fine not to exceed $250 and a second violation is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in county jail and/or a fine up to $1,000.
To be eligible for an unaltered dog license, a dog must be a law enforcement dog, a qualified service/assistance animal or a "competition dog." A "competition dog" must be registered with the AKC, UKC, ADBA or other valid registry approved by the Animal Care and Control department. Competition dogs must also meet one of the following requirements:
The dog has competed in at least one dog show or sporting competition in the past year. The dog has earned a conformation, obedience, agility, carting, herding, protection, rally, sporting, working or other title from a purebred registry as recognized by Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control. The owner is a member of a purebred dog breed club, approved by the county which maintains and enforces a code of ethics that includes restrictions from breeding dogs with genetic defects and life threatening health problems that commonly threaten the breed. Breeders are required to notify the animal control department within thirty days of a litter being whelped and must provide the name, address and telephone number of the new owner.
A license can be revoked or denied by the department for any of the following; upon receipt of one sworn complaint, if the owner has been cited for any violation of a state or local animal control law, or if the dog is deemed dangerous. Owners whose applications are denied or whose license is revoked are entitled to a hearing, which would be conducted by a hearing officer appointed by the animal control department.
The American Kennel Club encourages pet owners to spay or neuter their dogs if they do not want to participate in AKC conformation events or engage in responsible breeding programs. Through our public education department we support programs dedicated to educating the pet buying public on how to find a responsible breeder and how to make well-informed decisions when obtaining a dog. Such programs help to ensure that pet purchasers find a puppy or dog that is a good fit for their lifestyle, at an appropriate time in their lives, thereby increasing the likelihood that the animal will stay with the owners its entire life.
These methods, coupled with strongly enforced animal control laws (such as leash laws) and increased public education efforts are the most effective ways to address irresponsible dog owners while at the same time reducing shelter numbers and improving public safety. To the contrary, mandatory spay/neuter ordinances are extremely difficult to enforce, can be evaded by irresponsible animal owners, and punish responsible breeders who raise purebred dogs for their enjoyment of the sport. They also negatively impact owners who keep intact animals not to breed, but to participate in conformation and performance events.
Concerned dog owners are encouraged to contact their supervisor as soon as possible to voice their concerns. For talking points on opposing mandatory spay/neuter please click here.
What You Can Do:
Attend the Board of Supervisors meeting April 18th at 9:30am 383 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration 500 W. Temple Street Los Angeles,CA90012
Contact the County Board of Supervisors to express your opposition. To find out who represent you on the Board of Supervisors click here: http://regrec.co.la.ca.us/district/. Supervisor Gloria Molina (District 1) 856 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration 500 West Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90012 Phone: (213) 974-4111 Fax: (213) 613-1739 Email: Molina@bos.co.la.ca.us
Supervisor Yvonne Burke (District 2) 866 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration 500 West Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90012 Phone: (213) 974-2222 Fax: (213) 680-3283 Email: seconddistrict@lacbos.org
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky (District 3) 821 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration 500 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, CA 90012 Phone: (213) 974-3333 Fax: (213) 625-7360 E-mail zev@lacbos.org
Supervisor Don Knabe (District 4) 822 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, 500 West Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90012 Phone: (213) 974-4444 Fax: (213) 626-6941 Email: jdoe@lacbos.org
Mayor Michael D. Antonovich (District 5) 869 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration 500 West Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90012 Phone: (213) 974-5555 Fax: (213) 974-1010 fax Email: fifthdistrict@bos.co.la.ca.us
For more information please contact California Federation of Dog Clubs Susan Gioia, President 800-949-3746, ext. 106 760-471-5277 (fax) shojudge@yahoo.com
Sacramento Council of Dog Clubs Joan Gibson-Reed, Legislative Coordinator Jgrcorgis@aol.com
AKC Canine Legislation Department (919) 816-3720 doglaw@akc.org
I know some of you are not in U.S. but if you are this is a problem!
What I see is this mindless backyard breeding that goes on here in the States and the hundreds of thousands of unwanted dogs being put down in our pounds every year.
Should anyone who wants to be allowed to make a litter?
There is no perfect solution. There are always trade-offs. The question is: What is the least bad solution?
For me, the deaths of hundreds of thousand of perfectly healthy yet unwanted dogs every year due to the 'freedoms' that irresponsible Americans now possess is unacceptable.? I am willing to sacrifice some of my liberties if it means that this situation can be improved.
Quote:I am willing to sacrifice some of my liberties if it means that this situation can be improved.
I think you need to reconsider that. Our people in office are not the best and the brightest, plus, having been in rescue for around twenty years, I don't see this affecting anything accept those of us that are responsible dog owners. They (humane socienty, AKC) have been preaching this spay nueter thing the entire time I have been in rescue. I have never seen a difference. This country is so inured to these kind of things the only way to make them see what they are doing to these animals, is probably something horrific, like piling them next to the highway, or something completely rediculous like that.
Irresponsible people outnumber us greatly. I have seen people get their dogs taken away from them, and they sit there and deny that the dog is theirs. The dog is struggling to reach the guy, and he is sitting there lying and saying the dog is not his. Until we are allowed to nueter THAT guy, the population of homeless dogs will not go down.
He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.
About mixing other breeds into malinois and the geenepool... To improve mentality, increasing genepool doens't help I suppose. If you increase the genepool, you also increase the width of the mentality in dogs. Usually you want to increase genepool to avoid some health problems, improve feritility etc. I suppose the genepool for malinois all over the world is enough to keep health problems down, as long as you avoid too much linebreeding and too much use of one male. Isn't the breed pretty healthy compared to other working dog breeds? My 8 year old and 3 year old mals have so far no health problems at all.
To improve mentality... when it comes to taking in other breeds into the genepool, you might not get a mix from the most desired characters of the two breeds, you might get a mix of the worst characters from the breed. Plus, you might get new health problems into the breed that wasnt there before. It will be more difficult to foresee the character of individual puppies when mixing breeds. I love belgian shepherds. For me it's the belgian shepherd mentality I'm after when I buy a dog, I want a energetic, easy to learn, social, brave, hardworking dog with lots of drive. I don't want just a "workingdog", how good it might be, if it doesn't have that extra that is so typical for belgians. Like the people who loves the old style working GSD (there's still some at least in sweden). They hate the what they mean "hysterical" mali style and for them, the GSD style is the most desireble. Or lets say people who loves more calm and robust workingdogs, like Rottweilers. For them it doesn't matter that every excercise is done in a tenth of a second, just the work gets done. Not to mention people needing fast reactions and perfect obedience from their border collies. They might not need a tough dog that can stand against criminals, but a good and fast, easy to learn workingdog. The good thing with breeds and trying to keep the mentality quite the same within breed is that you have the possibility to choose and foresee how your puppy is going to be. And like someone says, every breeder has her/his own ideal dog of the breed, which creates some variation within the breed. Think this variation is good, keeps the geenepool wider, but the main charasteristics for the breed is still there.
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