As others have said, a shelter dog isn’t for everyone. Otherwise, why would Leader Dogs for the Blind have their own special breeding program using specific breeders and specific lines of purebred dogs?

I’m an owner of a Labrador Retriever female pup. My wife and I had spent months researching breeders and breeding lines to find a dog with the proven inherited temperment and intelligence to be able to do the work which this particular breed was designed to do.

Since it costs just as much to raise and care for a purebred, breeder-originated pup as it does for a adopted dog from a shelter with unknown inherited traits and genetic diseases, why would I want to gamble on the 100,000-to-1 chance that the shelter dog will be right for me? I’d rather take the 100-to-1 chance (e.g., even though we did all our homework on our last Lab she succumbed to cancer at age 9 - so it’s still a chance)on a purebred and invest my thousands of hours of training and companionship on my carefully researched choice for a new canine family member.

This isn’t reflective of the “stance” here. Gina and I are completely in support of voluntary low cost or free, accessible spay/neuter. We both own altered pets. What we are against is forced sterilization of pets, not just because it’s an unwelcome government intrusion into something that should be between me and my pet’s vet, but also because it DOES NOT WORK to reduce shelter deaths.

Of course spay/neuter reduces them — specifically, widespread, accessible, affordable or free (or incentivized) voluntary spay/neuter. If AB 1634 were a funded mandate for every county in the state to provide free, accessible spay/neuter to their citizens, I’d have been all over it AND it would have actually helped reduce shelter intake in the state.

MSN, on the other hand, has never done that anywhere it’s been implemented. The people who promote it are doing it for other reasons, because if their real goal was to achieve a reduction in shelter deaths, they’d be promoting the things that have actually made that happen in communities across the country instead of an intrusive bludgeon of a law that never has and never will.

I doubt that the new, neutered AB 1634 will make it out of the committee that vets legislation for constitutionality.

Since this gonad-grab is based on “complaints” without a due process provision for substantiating the complaints or appealing, it would go down in flames the first time someone with resources fought it.

BTW Robin, I can think of five or six families with six-figure incomes who have had a litter “for the kids” or an oopsie. One was a pair of very wealthy doctors who deliberately bred their pet BYB GSD bitch, who was already biting the neighbors. They had trouble *giving away* the purebred pups.

So while the command of written English betrayed by the puppymillers and “one-timers” on kijiji may be a pretty good indication of their powers of intellect, I wouldn’t make any firm judgments about their economic positions. The zip codes don’t necessarily bear your notion out either.

Nope. And that’s the thing, there is a huge market for purebred puppies — that’s what people want and they’re the only animal shelters are short on. So to say that there is a significant market for dogs NOT found in shelters is correct. That market creates puppy mills (there are not enough “good breeders” to satisfy the demand for low price chihuahua puppies! sorry!) and the subsequent relinquishment of these purebreds to shelters and the multitudes of breed rescues.

Spay/neuter, despite the stance taken here, HAS helped reduce the euthanasia rate significantly in my local human society since the late 80s when the volume of unwanted pets was so significant that they euthanized puppies and kittens. Now in my middle class suburb, I can’t remember the last time I saw testicles on a dog and anyone who’s ever been present in a euthanasia room during *that* day of the week will appreciate that that’s a good thing.

I agree that it shouldn’t be legislated but encouraged with incentives. My friend in rescue once said that spay/neuter was a class thing — with the exception of breeders you guess someone’s income bracket by whether or not their dog is fixed. This is a disturbing generalization but indeed rural and urban areas produce the most unwanted puppies. Incentives would target the demographic that is clogging the pound with their puppies, yet keep the purebred breeders from getting huffy.

And I’m happy to say that shelter dogs are the right choice for me. ;)

I agree that the process should be violation, not complaint, driven. That definitely needs to be fixed.

Deborah, I second Gina. Do the research. Learn the facts. A shelter/rescue dog isn’t the right choice for everyone for too many reasons to go into here.

I volunteer at a county shelter that never euthanizes for space and has sent well over 300 dogs to rescue in three years, but there are almost always dogs up for adoption that need a pretty particular type of family and circumstances (the hounds and border collies come to mind). Dogs aren’t “plug and play” ya know. And you don’t have the right to decide where I will get my next dog.