In fact, you’re not even close to right. You need to get some facts, not parrot tired talking points.

The overwhelming majority of pets are spayed and neutered in the United States, 75 percent of dogs and 87 percent of cats (citation) — it’s near-total among the pets of people with middle-class income and up, and it’s a highly desired option for people who can’t afford or can’t access the service.

Take low-cost or free spay-neuter where people can get it and they WILL alter their pets.

Yeah, that’s right: Offer the service and they will use it. That’s what happens in no-kill communities. In forced spay-neuter areas, people give up their pets because they can’t afford and/or can’t get to surgery, can’t afford fines and/or impoundment fees. So instead, their pets are killed — and these are pets of people who would willingly choose for their pets to be altered in percentages comparable to those among people with money/access to spay-neuter.

Western Europeans, on the other hand, largely believe surgery is surgery, and it’s very common for dogs to be left intact (as well as undocked, uncropped and vocal cords left alone — there’s a logical consistency there, unlike here, where the same people who want laws to force oviohysterectomies — major abdominal surgery — scream “mutilation” over surgeries far less painful and invasive). There’s a very effective tool for birth control used in Europe. It’s called a leash, and responsible owners have no problem using it. That’s the European way, and it may not work here as well, for many reasons, include population density and cultural differences.

I have no problem with spay-neuter. The overwhelming majority of all my pets, historically and currently, are altered. Every pet I have fostered and placed — including when I was running breed rescue — was altered.

What I have a problem with is regressive, punitive legislation that does nothing except make people feel they’ve righteously punished “bad” and “poor” people — even if it means more pets die. Because, well, if it seems right, do it. If it doesn’t work, do it more.

That’s a total fail, and hasn’t worked for more than a century, having “shelters” kill pets and blaming people for it.

Forced spay-neuter has failed everywhere it has been tried. The ASPCA and HSUS, which you also cite on your website, don’t even support it any more.

Why do you?

People live eight times longer than pets (or about that number)

So for every one human life you can have seven or eight animals..

Now do that calculation again…

Comment by John — August 7, 2009

Godwin’s Law right off the bat. Good job! You can discuss the facts, or take off. Actually, just take off.

But I’m guessing you’re pretty familiar with the whole Nazi thing, and like to trot it out a lot to take a discussion off track. Trolls and pure animal rights folks are always big on slinging the Nazi BS, and for the animal rights, folks, that makes sense. Until there are NONE (adopt one) really works for you folks, since the end game is the total elimination of all exploited domesticated animals, including those dogs and cats you purport to be concerned about.

By the way, that preserving also means preserving working abilities of dogs with jobs, purpose-bred dogs who have jobs to do. But I know: That’s slavery, and those poor happy bastards just don’t know they should hate their happy doggy lives.

Back to the PETA echo chamber, chump. We don’t buy the lies here. We’re into the human-animal bond, supporting pets AND people, both and together.

Oh good lord, we’ve got the Mengeles of Dog Genetics here. Listen to her because breeders are “preserving the breeds”.

Yes, because those many thousands of dogs that end up in shelters aren’t as GOOD as YOUR dogs…even though some of those dogs are indeed purebreds. Give us a break. Using flawed logic and cherrypicking data to say “LOOK, it FAILED!” when we are in DIRE economic times is really manipulative.

If you are referring to SB 250, dogs are already required to be licensed in nearly all (perhaps all?) local jurisdictions in California. Also, by California state law the fee to license an unaltered dog must be at least twice the cost of an altered dog license. We already have unaltered dog licensing.

In some jurisdictions the differential license fee is downright punitive, such as Sacramento where it costs $15 per year to license an altered dog but $150 per year to license an unaltered dog.

Experience shows that the higher the license fee, the lower the compliance to the licensing requirement. Low licensing compliance rates translate to lower return-to-owner rates when dogs get picked up stray. Dogs are being killed because of draconian license fees.

Dog licensing compliance in California and America overall is estimated at only 10-30%. Compliance has been getting worse as MSN laws, overly restrictive pet limit laws, and increasingly punitive licensing fees have gone into effect.

Responsible breeders are not making money; they cannot deal with the licenses, even assuming they could count on getting them, as a cost of doing business because they are not businesses. They cannot be indifferent to the possibility of their animals being subject to mandatory spay/neuter, regardless of their health or condition or age, if they lose the licenses. And they most especially cannot be indifferent to the prospect of those animals being seized, and most probably killed, because of a single mistake—by someone else, possibly!—or a malicious neighbor, or an animal control officer who is a PETA member or fellow-traveler.

The risk and the cost is too high, for the responsible breeders who are the ones we should be preserving, not shutting down. The “breeders” who would continue breeding under those circumstances, are not the responsible ones, and not even the higher-end BYBs, who really do love their dogs and take good care of them. It’s the bad BYBs, the ones for whom their dogs are of value only as long as they are producing, for whom their dogs are disposable and replaceable, who would keep breeding, and simply replace their dogs as necessary.

I believe the forces of pet extinction have proven themselves to be utterly without scruples and with an agenda to end ALL breeding. To them, a “breeder is a breeder is a breeder” and all are “greeders.” Once the “good breeders” are on the books, the forced spay-neuter crowd will move to eliminate those good breeders, because we’re the low-hanging, law-abiding fruit.

Plus, the argument that the ethical, reputable breeder adds to the shelter population is pure B.S. Our puppy contract REQUIRES that if a puppy/dog cannot be keep, the animal will be returned to me and to my partner.

I take that damn seriously. Those puppies were born in my bedroom, and I am responsible for them all their lives.

I guess part two is what is the objection to getting the license for the unaltered dogs? Good breeders doing things out in the open would probably be the first in line - versus the break-your-heart types, who would be hiding in the shadows?