U.S. Border Patrol estimates that 10,000 puppies a year are smuggled into San Diego from Mexico. AB 1634 will make this problem much, much worse.

Nathan Winograd is possibly the foremost proponent of No-Kill shelters. He was the operations director of the San Francisco SPCA, Executive Director of the Tompkins County (NY) SPCA, and founder of No-Kill Advocacy Center, a group dedicated to helping shelters achieve no-kill. In the most recent issue of No Kill Sheltering magazine, Mr. Winograd explains why mandatory spay/neuter laws fail.

Exploring the Surplus Cat and Dog Problem by the National Council on Pet Population Study & Policy summarizes the results of a large research study on why people relinquish their dogs and cats to shelters. This paper is for a general audience, meaning you and me. The academic papers that came out of the same research are also available on their site.

Data from the California Department of Health Services, Veterinary Public Health section shows that intake and euthanasia rates for dogs in California have been falling steadily for decades. Althought there is still a way to go, the state is on the right track. The NAIA Shelter Project has detailed statistics for local jurisdictions and the state as a whole.

The number of dogs euthanized in California is down an amazing 43% in just the last 5 years, and more than 75% since the numbers peaked in the mid 1970s. This happened without widespread mandatory spay/neuter laws, and despite a large increase in the state's human population. The state is making real progress though voluntary programs.

The programs that were implemented statewide over this period and are responsible for this success are:

• dog owner education programs
• improved enforcement of leash laws and “at large” laws
• low-cost voluntary spay/neuter outreach programs

These are programs that are proven to work. The state of California should encourage the expansion of these successful programs rather than try to a implement mandatory spay/neuter law which has proven it doesn't work.

The supporters cite Santa Cruz as a model for the rest of the state, but if you compare Santa Cruz with adjacent counties you can see that Santa Cruz is actually making less progress than its neighbors.

Supporters of the bill claim that it will save taxpayers millions of dollars. Not if Santa Cruz is any indication. The 1994-2000 data is missing, but from 1993, shortly before the ordinance went into effect, to 2005, the Animal Services Annual budget ballooned from $648,000 to $1.4 million dollars, a 216% increase. California state and local government cannot afford such massive cost increases.

The experience in Santa Cruz is not unique. Where mandatory spay/neuter (MSN) laws have been introduced elsewhere, they have failed to reduce euthanasia rates, have increased enforcement costs, and have decreased compliance with legally-mandated licensing and rabies vaccination.

• San Mateo County California* – dog euthanasia rates increased by 126%, dog licenses declined by 35%
• Los Angeles City, California – enforcement costs rose 269%, from $6.7 million to $18 million; and compliance to mandatory dog licensing declined
• Fort Worth, TX -- ended its mandatory spay-or-pay program. Rabies vaccination and licensing compliance declined after passage of the ordinance. This led to an increase in rabies in the city
• Montgomery County, MD – repealed its mandatory spay/neuter law. Euthanasia rates declined more slowly than they had been prior to the mandatory spay/neuter law; licensing compliance declined by 50%
• King County, WA -- euthanasia rates fell at a slower rate after mandatory spay/neuter. License compliance has decreased. Animal control expenses have increased 56.8% and revenues only 43.2%
• Camden County, NJ -- mandatory spay/neuter ordinance hasn’t stopped it from being called “consistently one of the leading, if not the leading killers of animals in the state of New Jersey” (ref: PAWS NJ)
• Aurora, CO – euthanasia and shelter intake rates increased. Licensing compliance dropped dramatically, compliance costs have increased 75% with revenue increasing only 13%

* in unincorporated areas of the county which are the areas covered by the ordinance.

A study Exploring the Cat and Dog Surplus Problem listed the top 10 reasons that dogs are relinquished to shelters as

1. Moving
2. Landlord issues
3. Cost of pet maintenance
4. No time for pet
5. Inadequate facilities
6. Too many pets in home
7. Pet illness(es)
8. Personal problems
9. Biting
10. No homes for littermates

Most of reasons that dogs are relinquished to shelters have nothing to do with spay/neuter.

AB 1634 is being sold as the solution to a pet overpopulation problem. Yet more spay/neuter cannot put a significant dent in that problem, because the problem is largely one of adult dogs being relinquished to shelters, not an excess of unwanted/unplanned litters that spay/neuter addresses. The real problem at California animal shelters is not due to an excess of irresponsible dog breeding. It is an undersupply of responsible dog ownership.

Most of those who back AB 1634 do so because of their legitimate concerns about dogs having to be killed in shelters. But AB 1634 won't help. It will actually make the real problem at shelters worse.

In animal shelters, what one finds are regional and local variations in the supply vs. demand balance for puppy adoptions. Some communities have an excess of unplanned puppies being born, some have a balance between supply and demand for adoption of puppies at shelters, and some have an inadequate supply of puppies at shelters to supply the local demand. Some shelters are importing puppies from other regions to supply their local demand for puppy adoptions. This is a big change from years ago, when there was an excess of puppies for adoption. Leash laws, voluntary spay/neuter, and owner education have been a huge success.

Again, the lingering problem with dogs in shelters in America is the adult dogs being brought there by people who, for various reasons, decide to get rid of their dog. We live in a throwaway society, where some will discard a dog in a shelter as readily as they throw away a broken toaster. This problem cannot be addressed by spay/neuter laws, or with any new laws.

What AB 1634 will do is reduce the number of responsible dog breeders. They are the ones who license their dogs in their county, socialize their puppies, vaccinate their puppies, research their puppy buyers carefully, do health checks on their breeding stock, and carefully select mates for their breeding dogs. Many of these people will not be able to afford "intact permits". In many cases they won't be eligible for them at any price under AB 1634.

Because there will be fewer responsible breeders in California, the supply of well-bred puppies will decrease. Since the demand will still be there, puppies imported from Mexico or from other states for sale at pet shops and sold over the Internet will fill the supply gap. These puppies will for the most part be from large-scale commercial breeders. With an increase of poorly-bred pets who suffer many more health and temperament defects, the problems with dog bite statistics in California will. increase. Even more dogs will get dumped in California shelters. And even more dogs will have to be euthanized each year in California shelters. Just as we've seen where mandatory spay/neuter laws have been implemented elsewhere, AB 1634 can backfire, and make the shelter euthanasia problem it seeks to address worse.

If California's mandatory spay/neuter legislation passes it will decimate working dog breeding in the state. Tens of thousands of working dogs would be ineligible for an "intact permit" under the law, at any price. While the proposed legislation appears to have exemptions for a small subset of working dogs, in reality it does not, since a dog would have to be a working law enforcement dog, a working guide dog for the blind, a working signal dog for the deaf, or a working service dog for the disabled by 4 months of age in order to be eligible for an "intact permit". There is no such thing as 4 month old working dogs, so nearly all future working dogs would be required to be spay/neutered if this law passes before they grow up.