California and mandatory spay-neuter laws

Neither California's SB 250 nor any other mandatory spay-neuter or anti-breeding bill we've seen yet will greatly reduce the number of dogs. Primary enforcement mandatory spay-neuter will greatly reduce the number of purebreds because it will drive away the best intentional breeders, among them most of the breeders of purebreds who sell to the general public. But the resulting reduction in the pet dog supply will be made up by 'moonshine' breeding and importing from other states.

California's bills isn't even primary enforcement mandatory spay-neuter: You'll only be forced to spay or neuter if you are caught violating some other law. As a practical matter that means that nearly all victims will be well-intended people who slipped up once and got caught. OR people who are targeted for some reason: If animal control wants to find a violation, they will find one.

Most violators of the law will shrug their shoulders and abandon the dog.

It's only the BEST breeders who are at risk from such bills. There'll still be plenty of dogs and plenty of business for pet sitters.

As a practical matter this is dog population control by doubling the risk that the dog is struck by lightning. Yes, spay-neuter will happen, but it'll be on a semi-random basis, too rare to have an effect on eproductive statistics. The largest effect will be due to increased abandonment in the first year or two by people who believe that the law actually requires spay-neuter of all pets and who cannot afford that.

You have to wonder about legislators who cannot think through how such a law would work. How can they possibly figure out a state budget?

Oh -- wait ...

Dispelling the Term "Puppymill"

This is a post from the Pet-Law email list reproduced here with permission of the author. Karen Strange is president of the Missouri Federation of Animal Owners (Mofed) and was among the handful of people in this country who saw the animal rights juggernaut lumbering towards us years before the rest of us recognized it for what it was.

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I wrote the following to present to legislators who attended a breakfast we co-sponsored at our state capitol with the Missouri Pet Breeders Association and the Professional Pet Association in the spring of 2009. The term "puppymill" is one of the most disgusting words used in our time, and is one we are working to eliminate from being socially acceptable in our language. We are encouraging breeders to include it in puppy packets and to get it in as many hands of the general public as possible. While it was written for Missouri, it can be revised to suit each state. I strongly encourage educating the public with every opportunity that the "pm" term is grossly misused, is an animal rights term, and has no legal definition.

DISPELLING THE TERM "PUPPYMILL"

There is no legal definition for the term "puppymill".

The term "puppymill" is a phrase coined by animal rights activists and supporters against anyone who breeds dogs, regardless of the care the animals receive. The name-calling is a means to turn the unknowing public against all dog breeders and to raise endless funds for continuous propaganda and money-making schemes by animal rights activists and organizations.

There is a difference between professional kennels and sub-standard kennels.

Professional breeders operate legal kennels, licensed by the state department of agriculture as well as USDA, and meet or exceed all guidelines pertaining to the health, care and well-being of their animals. They are active members in good standing of state associations, attend seminars, and earn continuing education hours for lectures on such topics as pre-natal and post-natal care, nutrition, health care, socialization, grooming, kennel management, tax preparation, ventilation, incubation and reproduction.

Substandard kennels are illegal, unlicensed facilities that produce animals with no regards to their health and well-being.

No one supports neglect or abuse of animals. Calling legal, licensed, professional breeders "puppymills" and claiming that they abuse their animals is grossly unfair and unjust, and is not acceptable.

The term "puppymill" is a derogatory word used by animal rights activists and supporters against anyone who breeds dogs, and is no more acceptable than using slur names for those of different ethnic backgrounds. It is as degrading and offensive to professional breeders to call them "puppymills" as it is to call our fellow man slur names. It is not socially acceptable to call our fellow man names, nor is it acceptable to call breeders slur names.

We ask that you refrain from using the term "puppymill", and that you correct others that use the term to describe dog breeders. Animal rights activists use the term to garner support for fundraising, and those funds are being used to eliminate all agriculture, use and enjoyment of animals. Please help us to stop the spread of animal rights issues. Let's all begin by eliminating the term "puppymill" from our vocabulary.

Karen Strange, President & Lobbyist

MoFed

A Letter to AKC

I've been communicating with the AKC both privately and otherwise since 2003, when I wrote President Dennis Sprung a letter. I wrote Chairman Ron Menaker the next year. Those letters were polite if forceful: I figured they were just not seeing the big picture.

I have tried to be reasonably polite in public since then, although recently I've started to call their leadership 'incompetent' because they still don't seem to get it and this failing seems to me to be willful. It looks like "Yeah, we know we're helping to ruin the future of purebred dogs but so what? We're very well paid and that is what matters to us."

Well, maybe it's something else -- maybe it's "This board of directors is just so bad that we can't do a thing."

You know what? When good people at the top are hamstrung by an incompetent board (or whatever), when they've worked year after year and gotten nowhere, they resign. When you stay at the top of a rotten organization you are part of the problem simply because you are still there. You are keeping the organization from confronting its problems and it begins to look like the only thing that really matters is your paycheck.

At this point I don't think the AKC or its top people deserve our support. We are going to have to live without the AKC anyway, ten years from now: Either they'll have shrunk to where they just register a few thousand purebreds a year for the wealthy, or they'll be working for HSUS. Or -- if they can't downsize fast enough and HSUS doesn't want them -- they'll have vanished. The sooner the dog fancy comes to understand that grim future, the better.

Here's my latest letter to them. I have changed a very few words to clarify and added definitions in one place.

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Dear Doglaw:

You really STILL don't get it, do you? If the breeding of purebred dogs is made impossible, then there isn't going to be an AKC. PLEASE, go back and re-read that last sentence. It is difficult for you, I know, but it is the key to everything else, especially YOUR FUTURE.

If the COMMERCIAL breeding of dogs is made illegal -- five states now? Six? And California likely to join them within a few weeks? -- then your efforts to bring commercial breeders back into the AKC fold will have been a total waste of time and money. Illegal breeders may occasionally register with you now, but as the enforcement net tightens, breeding operations go 'moonshine,' and purebred dogs fade, they will stop doing so.

Federations of dog clubs are no more than federations of DOG CLUBS. They start out utterly clueless about legislative matters and the result is that they all fall into the same traps, one by one. When you sit back and say "Oh well, we're just here to support the federations" you are being grossly negligent.

What? Your toddler is playing in your front yard and you let him run into the street because "We're just here to support our kids"?

Probably not, and it's the same for the federations. You should offer training in legislative matters -- not just a cheerful seminar on how useful the AKC is, but actual nuts and bolts of the AR strategy and tactics and how they can best be countered. Then if a federation insists on being at the table by hopping on the table and spreading its legs, you do not have to simply say "Oh, we're just here to support the federations." You should take your own (AKC) position which reflects your own broader concerns, and perhaps knowledge ... well, you could have broader knowledge.

Shame, shame on you for your performance in Tennessee. Enablers, that's what you are. "Federation Honey, I'm so sorry you're an alcoholic. Here's another case of Clueless Lite beer for you." A suggestion: Have someone in the legislative group join the NRA and donate to the NRA-ILA and NRA-PVF as well. That'll get you on the mailing list for everything they do and you'll see how serious organizations do what you dabble in.

[NRA-ILA = Institute for Legislative Affairs -- the lobbying arm NRA PVF = Political Victory Fund -- the PAC]

You know who is more hated than dog breeders? Gun owners. And you know what group has not a single national level candidate in either party who has run recently on a program of restricting its rights? GUN OWNERS.

You know why? Because the NRA has made restriction of gun rights such a hot potato that politicians don't mess with us. We gun owners are actually winning new rights from year-to-year. "Must issue" concealed carry licenses (unless there is a specific reason to do otherwise a locality must issue a CC license on request) are one frontier. (You think you could ever wrap your thinking around a "must issue" home kennel license allowing 10 dogs regardless of local pet limits? No ... I thought not.) 'District of Columbia vs. Heller' established that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms: You think that would have happened without the NRA?

I get mailings from the NRA telling me what to do at least weekly. It's a damn nuisance, but you know what? I DO IT -- at least the part that doesn't cost money -- because I know they are effective and I want to see our rights preserved.

Having to defend breeding rights without substantial help from the AKC because you are too lazy to help yourselves really pisses me off. What will you do when the whole works craters? Are all the resumes there up to date? Or will you be happy working for HSUS, assuming they want your name badly enough to put in the money to keep you afloat?

Or are you counting on us to save your chickens? Hahahaha ... Well, we'll try.

Don't give me that "We don't have the money to defend breeding" rubbish. The NRA MAKES a lot of its money defending gun rights. Dog breeders are crying out for you to do the same and if you could ever get past the clueless stage, you could.

Given the elephantine pace of change at the AKC it's unlikely you could get there in time to save the breeding of purebred dogs but if us grassroots folks are able to do it for you, you could help immensely in the mopping up phase, five or eight years from now.

Walt Hutchens

Timbreblue Whippets

Evil is Still Evil

AR apologists often defend their support of PETA and HSUS by saying, "But some of what they do helps animals!"

Adolf Hitler built the Autobahn and got the VW into production with an innovative financing scheme something like S&H green stamps that let many middle class Germans buy an automobile. He restored German prosperity following a much more serious economic crisis than this country has ever faced -- following the crash of '29 they had hyperinflation and the middle class was financially wiped out. I hear he also loved animals.

Is any of this why he is remembered? How many people in 1945 were sorry to learn that he was dead and that the 'Thousand Year Reich' had lasted only about 12 years?

(The BBC's 'World at War' series is an outstanding video history of WW-II. Filmed for the 50th anniversary of the war, it goes deeply into 'how did this happen,' with interviews with many people who were there -- ordinary Germans and of course military men, as well as experts on the period. HIGHLY recommended for kids old enough to watch documentaries that include combat and death camp liberation scenes. Available on DVD from NetFlix and other usual outlets.)

It is hard to do great evil without doing bits of good here and there. But evil is still evil.

What Freedom Means

Nobody supports reducing her own freedom, meaning things she is allowed to do.

But flip it around and ask yourself this: How many people have in the last week posted a message saying that they'd be okay with a law against someone else's doing something that the poster disapproves of?

That is where our government gets support for things like mandatory spay/neuter (MSN), no tethering, anti-crop/dock, no-debarking, no use of e-collars or prong collars, no leaving pets in cars, and so on.

Freedom, folks. It means absolutely nothing if you're free to do only those things that Walt (or any other person) approves of. Meaningful freedom is "freedom to do things that many (or even most) people disapprove of."

Only when there is close to 100% agreement that there's no good reason to ever do a thing and very clear reasons not to -- drive drunk? shoot off a firearm in your backyard, in town? -- should freedoms be restricted or eliminated by law. How many of the proposed new laws we're dealing with in pets would pass that test? Okay, no dog fighting ... can you think of even one more that's on the HSUS agenda?

But for every one of the laws on the list above (MSN, no tethering ...) we know people who want their freedoms to do the things they think are okay, but don't support your freedoms for your somewhat different list.

That's why these laws are so hard to fight. Most people in California actually think that all pets should be spayed/neutered. They don't think deeply enough to understand the issues, so because they don't want that freedom, they support laws that will take it away from you, too.

There's no understanding that 'freedom' means 'freedom to do things that most people disapprove of.' And that as a result, we need a very clear reason -- one that just about everyone agrees with -- to pass a law against something. Trying to fine-tune what you (or I) consider good behavior with laws is not just futile but against the very principles on which this country was founded.

The Resources to End Euthanasia of Good Pets

If a small fraction of the effort and money invested in promoting ineffective and restrictive laws were directed at marketing unowned pets, it would end euthanasia of dogs with the potential to be good pets. Cats are more difficult because there's a genuine oversupply coming from the fact of feral populations.

And savings would come out of the woodwork, everywhere: Is the time devoted to fighting those ineffective and restrictive laws by all of us truly worth nothing? The time given by lawmakers to trying to make the right decisions about them? Do we truly divert society's attention to wild claims of evils surrounding dogs and cats and requiring urgent attention at no cost whatever?

HSUS and their supporters have much to answer for. But 'answering' won't happen: The best we can hope for is that they join the Communist Party of the USA, the American Nazi Party, and the KKK in 'do they still exist?' insignificance.

That, however, will happen. HSUS will rue the day their board of directors elected Wayne Pacelle as president and CEO.

The Truth About (Most) Shelters and Pounds

Many of us came to pet-law because of bad experience with animal control or animal shelters. Most of the rest of us know stories that would curl your hair. But there is a danger that we make exactly the mistake that some people at the worst shelters do: assume that everyone with a certain label (like 'breeder,' 'pet owner,' or 'shelter worker') is evil.

First, it simply isn't true. Each such label covers a wide spectrum of people and attitudes. In fact, the majority of breeders, owners, and shelter workers are sincere and good hearted people doing the best they can with their respective duties.

And secondly, one universal truth is that wrong assumptions lead to bad results. Those animal control personnel who believe all breeders are exploitive abusers and/or all owners are irresponsible idiots, cause more damage than they do good through their mistrust. And exactly the same will be true if we make unreasonably bad assumptions.

Virginia's a large enough state to offer a reasonable example. Guessing from the number of counties, we have over 100 public shelters of some sort. There are three or four that are run by hard core AR types and some others that have problematic people or policies but the majority are doing the best they can in the circumstances. Some of them set examples to all of us: The shelter in our area has been getting steadily closer to no-kill since before no-kill was cool.

They haven't done it through tricks like shipping less-adoptable dogs somewhere else to be killed, either. It has been 100% via hard work -- use of PetFinders (mostly outside of paid work hours), participation in shelter transport programs, advertising of dogs, and cooperation with rescue, breeders, and others.

I'm sure much of the problem is that we hear a lot more about problem shelters than we do the good ones, but of course that's exactly the same defense that the problem shelters can offer: "We only see the bad owners and the messed-up dogs they dump on us."

Shelter work is hard in general and doing it right is very hard. It insults the very people and organizations who least deserve it when we talk as if they were all trying to kill as many as they can while making owners walk over hot coals. Can't we do better?