Diane's Blog: One More Try - SB 250 CA Spaying & Neutering (Florez)

Thursday, April 16, 2009

One More Try - SB 250 CA Spaying & Neutering (Florez)

Is this bill different than Mancuso's AB 1634 "CA Healthy Pets Act?" Currently SB 250 requires an "owner or custodian" to provide a certificate of sterility, unless written confirmation is obtained from a licensed veterinarian that serious bodily harm, or death would result from spaying, or neutering the animal. California animal owners are wary of a change in the legal status of animals as a result of the use of a term other than owner. Custodian does not have a legal definition and is not legally equivalent to the term guardian. Still, the use of the word custodian will cause reticence for some to support SB 250. I currently hold a watch position for this bill.

clipped from www.venturacountystar.com

Panel approves pet neutering bill

SACRAMENTO — Treading cautiously back into an issue that lawmakers say generated more letters, e-mails and phone calls than any other last year, a Senate panel on Wednesday approved a bill that would force dog and cat owners to have their pet spayed or neutered if they are also cited for certain other offenses, such as allowing the animal to roam free.

Legislators have wrestled for years with the question of how far to go in trying to control the overpopulation of dogs and cats, and the costs to local governments for animal control services and operating animal shelters. State law already requires shelters to spay or neuter animals before they can be adopted and also imposes escalating state fees on owners who claim an unaltered pet that has been impounded.

1 comment:

CDOC Dogtalk said...: There are several issues we should watch in this bill.

Although Senator Wiggens has asked for some changes, they have been applied late in the bill. So the operative wording is
"The licensing agency has issued one citation verified by the agency pursuant to existing policies and procedures that the owner, custodian, applicant, or licensee has allowed a dog to be stray or run at large or has otherwise been found to be neglectful of his or her or other animals."So the limited language later in the bill does not really apply.

The second thing is we are talking about one citation - one ticket. If you accept a citation rather than going to fight it, and if you have any intact dogs, the penalty can be MSN of all those dogs. It is disingenuous to pretend that no responsible owner can ever have a dog that gets out once, or loses a collar or knocks over a water dish.

And finally, we are now saying that MSN is a penalty for bad bahavior. How does this track with encouraging voluntary MSN?

This is a bad bill. We do need to address the issue of repeatedly roaming dogs but this bill does not do it. That would require that dogs picked up by Animal Services be permanently positively identified so we can target the owners of repeat offenders. But evidently Florez does not want to tackle that.; April 28, 2009 at 11:59 AM