Dogs In Danger – CA – Kathy is Almost out of Time…

Kathy – A0973693

Breed: Pointer
Age: Young adult
Gender: Female
Size: Large,

Shelter Information:

LA City Animal Services – East Valley
14409 Vanowen St
Van Nuys , CA

Shelter dog ID: A0973693
Contacts:

Phone: None
Name: ADOPTION STAFF
email: PLEASE COME TO THE SHELTER!

About Kathy – A0973693: ESTIMATED EUTHANASIA DATE. VISIT THE SHELTER ASAP – BRING DOG’S ID#. KATHY – ID#A0973693 My name is Kathy and I am an unaltered female, tricolor Pointer. The shelter thinks I am about 1 year and 6 months old. I have been at the shelter since Oct 07, 2009. Adoption fees include spay/neuter surgery, all animals will be sterilized prior to release.

If you know you or someone you know is looking for a pet please come to the shelter today.

Don’t adopt just because you feel sorry for Kathy – A0973693!
Adoption Should Be A Well Thought Out Decision, It’s A Lifetime Commitment.

email Kathy – A0973693 to a friend

If there is room in your heart… there is always room for must one more pet or a way to find them a home!!

Thanks to Dog in Danger for the Warning!!

COMMUNITY CATS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Best Friends Animal Society celebrates National Feral Cat Day, Oct. 16, 2009.

Best Friends Animal Society encourages people to use National Feral Cat Day on October 16 as an opportunity to learn how they can be part of the solution to make life better for homeless cats.

Started in 2001 by Alley Cat Allies, National Feral Cat Day has become “an effective way to highlight the issue of overpopulation of feral and stray cats, and the humane approaches to helping them,” said Shelly Kotter, Focus on Felines campaign specialist for Best Friends Animal Society.

Kotter explained that Best Friends Animal Society believes that the needs of free-roaming cats and the issues surrounding them — which exist in every community — are best encapsulated in the term “community cats.”

“There is no one description that fits all free-roaming cats,” Kotter added. “These homeless cats are the result of a failure in the community — unneutered housecats that wandered away from home, cats abandoned when the family moved, or cats that have never been socialized to people in the first place. None of these cats would be on the streets if people had spayed or neutered their pets and kept their cats safe.”

Kotter outlined some simple steps to help homeless cats. “You can get involved as much, or as little as your schedule and budget permit. Don’t underestimate what seems like a small contribution to the cause, many people doing little things add up to major accomplishments,” she said.

• If you feed stray cats, spay and neuter them so that the breeding cycle is stopped.
• Keep your own cats from becoming statistics. Have them live in the home. Get them spayed or neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. If you want your cat to have outside experiences, please consider screening-in a porch or patio, building a cattery, investing in special cat fencing, and/or teaching your cat to walk on a harness.
• Support your local community trap/neuter/return (TNR) groups. Donate — even small amounts add up. Volunteer a couple of hours a month.
• Become a caregiver for a local cat colony.
• Foster adoptable kittens or lost housecats rescued during TNR operations.

“Best Friends believes the solutions for these cats rest with the community as well. Through a variety of strategies, people have the power to help the cats lead a humane life as well as reducing the number of cats who are eking out an existence on the streets,” Kotter said.

“We like to think that every day is ‘community cat day.’ We are working with communities across the country on innovative and proactive programs to help lessen the numbers of feral and stray cats euthanized in shelters.

“Through our work, several rural Iowa communities have embraced TNR programs, fostering and re-homing kittens and tame cats rescued from colonies. If the cats are in a place where they are at risk, the people in these towns follow strict relocation protocols to provide the cats a new home,” Kotter said.

And to give thanks to the many local people in southern Utah who help care for community cats, Best Friends is hosting a special appreciation brunch on Saturday, October 17, in honor of National Feral Cat Day. Co-founder and interim CEO, Gregory Castle will be speaking, a tribute movie will be shown, and special awards will be presented to relocation caregivers.

Other successful components of Best Friends’ Focus on Felines program include:

Four Directions Community Cat Program (southern Utah)

This unique program works with more than 38 urban and rural communities in southern Utah. Best Friends’ clinic as well as five veterinary clinics around southern Utah participate in this low cost spay/neuter program. The program has six new relocation colonies that re-home community cats who otherwise would have been euthanized.

FixNation (Los Angeles)
Best Friends works in Los Angeles with FixNation, a nonprofit clinic that cares mainly for feral and stray cats but also operates as a low cost spay/neuter clinic. The first of its kind in the United States, the ground-breaking clinic leads the way as a model for community cat clinics around the country. The clinic works with local groups and individuals to battle cat overpopulation, providing free spay/neuter services for feral and stray cats, as well as shots and health checks. In addition, FixNation and Best Friends work together to lower the shelter euthanasia rates in East Valley, an impoverished area of Los Angeles. The program targets East Valley residents, offering TNR as an alternative to trap and kill. In the first year of the program, estimates are that East Valley shelter cat intake statistics will be reduced by five percent.

First Coast No More Homeless Pets (Jacksonville, Florida)

The killing of community cats has ended in Jacksonville. The Feral Freedom Program is a collaboration between the city of Jacksonville, First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP), the Jacksonville Humane Society and Best Friends Animal Society. Cats who arrive at the shelter in traps are turned over to FCNMHP to be spayed/neutered, then returned to their original trap location. Other communities are adopting this program as a way to save lives and taxpayer dollars.

No More Homeless Pets in Utah (northern Utah)
No More Homeless Pets in Utah and Best Friends work together with local governments to improve the shelter systems in northern Utah using tax dollars to combat the over population of community cats.

How you can help

• Learn more about how to help cats in your community and elsewhere, by becoming a fan of the Focus on Felines campaign.

• Make a difference by making a donation to the Focus on Felines campaign.

• Click on the image to the right to see the Best Friends National Feral Cat Day video.

• Listen to Shelly Kotter discuss National Feral Cat Day on this PRWeb podcast.

• For a listing of special National Feral Cat Day activities, click here.

• If you are a caregiver in southern Utah and need additional information about the appreciation brunch, or wish to learn more about the Four Directions Community Cat Program, please contact shannonr@bestfriends.org.

By Best Friends staff – Photos by Molly Wald

Posted: Just One More Pet

Adopt Just One More Pet… MV Shelter Reduces Cat and Kitten Adoption Fees Until Sept 27th – Good Job MV!

Adopt Just One More Pet and Save a Life!!

Sharing a Great Pet Adoption Pet Story!!

Our friends, Al and Andrea, in Corpus Christi moved there with 3 cats.  Over the past five years, one… Maggie, has passed on and gone to kitty heaven.  But during that time, they have  rescued a black pug that had some health issues, a Black Ker (maybe) out of a litter of abandoned puppies and an orphaned Chihuahua.  This was quite a feat for my friend, Andrea, who was basically afraid ‘or at least leery’ of dogs  before they adopted their first one, Buddy, at Al’s urging. Then ‘she’ adopted the next two, Beau and Princess.

Then about 10-days ago they ran across, almost over, a kitten.  The Calico kitty who looks like one of their older cats, Peaches, was running across the highway when they found her.   They did more than their due diligence to find the kitten’s owners but she is now one of the family and has been named Kit Kat… along with Peaches and Bart makes three.

3 kitties and 3 doggies… a nice family now that the kids are grown!

 

If you are an animal lover 4 to 6 pets, throw in a bird, fish or pocket pet, perhaps making even 7 or 8 are a fun and manageable number for a couple or a responsible family teaching their kids the values and joy of taking care of another living creature and overall responsibility (under supervision). If you aren’t, it probably seems like a nightmare… but then you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog.

 

Cats, kittens at reduced cost this week

 

Prospective cat owners can save money now through Sept. 27 at the Mission Viejo Animal Shelter.

DAWG, Dedicated Animal Welfare Group, the shelter’s non-profit that raises funds for animals’ medical procedures, is sponsoring cats and kittens at a reduced cost.

Adoption fees, which are normally $135, range from $35 to $85 through Sunday. Cats and kittens adopted will be vaccinated, spayed and neutered and have a microchip.

The shelter is at 28095 Hillcrest.

For more information, call 949-470-3045 or visit the City’s Web site at www.cityofmissionviejo.org.

 

Adjust the Pet Limitation and Restriction Laws

There is always room for Just One More Pet.  So if you have room in your home and room in your heart… Adopt Just One More!  If you live in an area that promotes unreasonable limitations on pets… fight the good fight and help change the rules and legislation…

Our shelter and rescues are over-flowing with pets of all types.  People are moving and just leaving them to die… or they go to a shelter and are Euthanised.  The Euthanization of healthy or pets with manageable conditions is a crime or irresponsibility!

California… one of the most liberal states in the union, as well as others, allows condo communities and senior communities, and even whole cities, to apply unreasonable limitations on the number of pets people may have and care for, after being one of the craziest areas that has promoted Puppy Mills to over breed.

Nobody promotes the hording of pets.  People with 10, 20 and more pets that they cannot take care of or clean up after is also a crime and often a mental condition.  But not allowing a senior to take her friends’ pets after their friend has died (in their senior community because they only allow one or two pets) is also a travesty and should be a crime!  And it happens every day!

Leisure World in Laguna Woods (primarily attached homes), one of the largest groups of Senior Citizen Housing Communities… Laguna Woods, Seal Beach, Camarillo, etc changed their rules a couple years back to restrict residents to “1″ pet per household.

I know of two cases where someone’s friend has died there (Leisure World) and had asked that a surviving friend in the community take care of their pet if nobody else could take their beloved dog(s) in.  (Cats are easier to hide).  In one case the friend had to move out of Leisure World (from a home she owned) to honor her promise.  In the second case, the pet was euthanised after the living friend tried to no avail to find her deceased friend’s pet a home and the shelter she had to released him to “accidentally” euthanized the surviving dog.  It broke the woman’s heart  and ultimately caused her demise.  Come on people… there probably is nobody that has more time and more love to give than seniors.  Whatever happened to common sense??

If for no other reason than the present economy, all pet limit laws and regulations need to be adjusted upward.

Everyone is different and so if every situation.  If you have a neighbor with one pet who does not clean up after them of abuses them… you need to step up and step in.  If you have a neighbor with 8 pets who are wonderfully taken care of and don’t bother anyone… you need to happy for them and support there rights!

I want to state again that  JOMP is absolutely against hording!!  But on the flip side, I know someone who works as a vet tech, that over the years has adopted/rescued 21 animals that she has kept and probably another 100 that she has found homes for after temporarily fostering.  I was at her home to drop something off one day and was amazed.  The house was clean and comfortable, the pets were friendly, happy and well taken care of and you didn’t realize that there were as many as there were.  The house did not smell like pets in any way.  There was no more mess than at anyone’s house I know and no pet waste anywhere inside or in the yard… and the house had be ‘peterized’ in a lot of cleaver ways.

Is this an isolated pet/animal story of course?!?  Should it be allowed… absolutely!  We are not puppets or little cloned drones and this woman has the love and ability to save and take care of these animals.

We need to adjust for the high rates of homeless animals and support people’s freedoms!!  Today it is pets, tomorrow it is children!

Save the Life of Just One More…Animal!

Posted:  Just One More Pet

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Doomed Dogs Get On The Rescue Wagon to Other Shelters

Chinese City’s “One Dog” Policy Has Residents Howling

PET TALK: Don’t dump your pets when times are tough

Shelters Full of Chihuahuas

‘Dogs Have The Intelligence of a Human Toddler’

California: Puppy Mill Bill to be voted on by Senate this week. We need you! ~~ Please Call Your State Senator: Yes on AB 241 ~~

Dear California Advocates,

The California Responsible Breeder Act of 2009 is moving quickly toward becoming state law—the Senate is expected to vote on it as early as this week. It is crucial that your senator votes YES on this humane legislation that will help crack down on puppy mills.

If passed, the Responsible Breeder Act will limit the number of intact animals that large-scale breeding facilities are permitted to own. With this law on the books, law enforcement will finally have the authority to put an end to inhumane, overcrowded conditions at puppy mills.

Similar legislation limiting the number of dogs who may be kept by commercial breeders has already passed in Louisiana, Virginia and Washington. You can help California be next!

What You Can Do

We all hate puppy mills. This is your chance to really do something about them—call your state senator’s office today to urge him or her to vote in favor of the Responsible Breeder Act (AB 241).

Visit the ASPCA Advocacy Center to find your senator’s phone numbers and to let us know you called.

Thank you, California, for joining the battle against puppy mills.

Having trouble viewing this email? Read it online in your browser.

Posted:  Just One More Pet

11-foot python unexpected guest for California family

LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. (AP) – Imagine this visitor…  A Southern California family got a slithery surprise when an 11-foot python turned up in their front yard.

Francisco Delgadillo says he was chatting with his sister on their porch Sunday night in Lake Elsinore when he saw an enormous snake moving across the fenced yard.

The first animal control officer who saw the size of the critter had to call for backup. Two officers then wrangled the 50-pound snake into a truck and took it to a shelter.

Authorities say the Burmese python probably was somebody’s pet. If the owner doesn’t claim it by the end of the week, it probably will be given to a snake rescue group.

Abandoned snakes into the wild, including Burmese pythons has become a huge problem in many areas within the U.S., especially in Florida.

Be responsible and take any pets that you can no longer keep or take care of to a rescue, a sheltor, or find them a new home; please do not just release them for the sake of the animal as well as people that it could harm.

Related Resources

• Toddler Dies, Python Wrapped Around Her
• Florida’s python problem may be spreading

Government Money Used To Build Monkeyless Exhibit Instead of Saving Rescued Abandoned and Homeless Animals and Stopping the Euthanization of Healthy Animals

Would you believe a story about the Los Angeles Zoo spending millions (about $7 million) in taxpayer money on a Chinese Golden Monkey exhibit — only to have the Chinese decide they don’t want to send the monkeys? Wait, what happened to the firefighters and the teachers? California’s government tells us they have no money for them, yet they are spending money on Chinese Golden Monkeys? (STORY) No wonder 90% of Americans, according to the L.A. Times, are concerned with government spending.

LA Zoo Searches for New Simians After Monkey Snub

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Zoo may have the nation’s only monkey lair approved by a feng shui expert. There’s only one problem: No monkeys.

The city spent $7.4 million building the China-themed primate enclosure — complete with Canary Island palm trees, artificial trees with extra springy limbs, and a viewing structure with Chinese-style tilework — after China promised to lend the zoo a trio of rare golden snub-nosed monkeys.

But now the Chinese government has taken the monkeys off the table, leaving zoo officials searching for suitable stand-in simians to take the place of the golden monkeys, known for their blue-faces and blond-hair.

“Within 60 days, some lucky monkey will have a home there,” City Councilman Tom LaBonge, whose district includes the zoo, said Thursday.

Zoo spokesman Jason Jacobs said negotiations with Chinese officials broke down several weeks ago, but he did not know why.

The Chinese official that had signed the agreement granting Los Angeles the monkeys has since left his position, he said.

The Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles did not answer a call seeking comment and an e-mail was returned as undeliverable. The Chinese Wildlife Conservation Association, which was to oversee the animal loan, did not answer a call before business hours in Beijing.

Chinese officials had offered a 10-year-lease for the monkeys to former Mayor James Hahn during a visit to China in 2002.

Hahn had originally sought to lease pandas for the zoo, but Chinese officials refused, saying four zoos in the U.S. already have pandas, said David Towne, president of the Giant Panda Conservation Foundation, which helped broker the failed monkey loan.

“They use the pandas as somewhat of a diplomatic and political tool as a reward for supporting Chinese policies,” he said.

The city agreed to pay the Chinese government $100,000 a year for the monkeys that were offered instead of pandas. Officials voted in 2006 to build the enclosure designed to look like a rural Chinese village. The enclosure was finished in 2008.

A feng shui expert hired for $4,500 tweaked the final design with a water fountain and other features meant to promote the monkeys’ health and happiness.

Zoo officials are now consulting with their colleagues at other zoos to obtain native Chinese monkey species that will fit in with the surroundings.

“Of course we’re disappointed we didn’t get the golden monkeys, but the end result is we have a gorgeous new habitat, which is fully capable of housing any other variety of Asian primate,” Jacobs said.

By JACOB ADELMAN – L.A. Times -  Jun 11, 2009 – The Associated Press

Source:  GlennBeck.com

And what makes this story even more unbelievable and crazy is that not only is California virtually bankrupt and both firefighters and school teacher’s jobs are in peril, but how about instead of spending $7 million on Chinese Monkeys visiting L.A. on loan, that we look after thousands upon thousands of animals, healthy American pets, that are being abandoned and taken to California shelters statewide in record numbers because of the foreclosure situation and after ‘we over-bred’ them, both manmade situations, causing these animals to be euthanized in record numbers.

Just last week the ASPCA sent out an alert to stop Governor Schwartzennegger from cutting Shelter Funding: California: Protest Governor’s Plan to Cut Shelter Funding! .  His plan would allow shelters to euthanize healthy pets that are not picked up after 3-days or less rather than allow 60-days to find them homes; which in today’s environment, isn’t enough.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal would suspend the state mandate and cut the minimum holding period to three days or less.

Due to the dramatic increase in home foreclosures, more and more animals are ending up in shelters—and if this proposal passes, shelters will be forced to euthanize scores of healthy, adoptable pets who might have otherwise found happy endings in new homes. These animals have already had their lives turned upside down. They deserve the opportunity to get a second chance and to live out their natural life span(s).

What You Can Do

Please take a few minutes today to call your California state senator and assemblymember to ask them to oppose the governor’s proposal to suspend the animal adoption mandate.

Visit the ASPCA Advocacy Center to find your legislators’ phone numbers and let us know you called.

If we insist on going along with this insanity of bailouts, then why can’t some of this TARP money that is just ’sitting somewhere’ or is being used to study swine odor or why men don’t like wearing condoms be used to rescue living animals, stop the euthanization of all healthy animals, and cut adoption fees at shelters to help families adopt an animal or an additional pet.  Temporarily housing homeless and abandoned animals and then coordinating the various facets of matching homeless animals with potential families is a ’shovel ready project’ that would save and create jobs in California and most other states while saving lives.

Perhaps the LA Zoo would like to offer up the the empty Chinese Golden Monkey Exhibit Facility  and funds for that program for the over-flowing LA, OC and Inland Empire shelters until some TARP money could be provided for a new facility, a central coordination program, food and supplies for existing shelters and rescue programs and and/or to update and enlarge existing facilities??   They could even set up an adoption center at the Zoo!?!

Thank you, California, for speaking up for your state’s neediest animals.  First priorities should always be for programs that affect live creatures directly… people and animals instead of many of the crazy things on the approved “bailout” project list.

-Ask Marion/Just One More Pet

Related Posts:

• California: Protest Governor’s Plan to Cut Shelter Funding!
• Stop California SB 250 – Save Our Dogs and Our Rights
• Doomed Dogs Get On The Rescue Wagon to Other Shelters
• Where there is a will…
• Help Pass California AB 233 – Pet Adoption Tax Credit
• Economic Forecast: One Million Pets May Lose Homes in the U.S.
• Just How Bad Is The Economy??
• GETTING TO ZERO
• 285 Dogs Are Out and Never Looking Back
• November Is Adopt-A-Senior-Pet Month
• Shelters Full of Chihuahuas
• Adopting A Senior Pet Has Many Advantage For Families and Seniors
• Angels For Animals Event November 13th

Posted:  Just One More Pet

California: Protest Governor’s Plan to Cut Shelter Funding!

Dear California Animal Advocates,

As many of you have heard, one of Governor Schwarzenegger’s ideas to reduce California’s $24 billion budget deficit is to slash state funding to city and county shelters. This funding is used to support the state’s “animal adoption mandate” to keep shelter animals alive for no less than six days, which gives people a reasonable window of time to locate lost pets. It also gives unclaimed animals the chance to be adopted or taken in by rescue groups.  Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal would suspend the state mandate and cut the minimum holding period to three days or less.

Due to the dramatic increase in home foreclosures, more and more animals are ending up in shelters—and if this proposal passes, shelters will be forced to euthanize scores of healthy, adoptable pets who might have otherwise found happy endings. These animals have already had their lives turned upside down. They deserve the opportunity to get a second chance.

What You Can Do

Please take a few minutes today to call your California state senator and assemblymember to ask them to oppose the governor’s proposal to suspend the animal adoption mandate.

Visit the ASPCA Advocacy Center to find your legislators’ phone numbers and let us know you called.

Thank you, California, for speaking up for your state’s neediest animals.

Posted:  Just One More Pet

Related Posts:

• Government Money Used To Build Monkeyless Exhibit While Governor Threatens to Cut Shelter Funding
• Stop California SB 250 – Save Our Dogs and Our Rights
• Doomed Dogs Get On The Rescue Wagon to Other Shelters
• Where there is a will…
• Help Pass California AB 233 – Pet Adoption Tax Credit
• Economic Forecast: One Million Pets May Lose Homes in the U.S.
• Just How Bad Is The Economy??
• GETTING TO ZERO
• 285 Dogs Are Out and Never Looking Back
• November Is Adopt-A-Senior-Pet Month
• Shelters Full of Chihuahuas
• Adopting A Senior Pet Has Many Advantage For Families and Seniors
• Angels For Animals Event November 13th

Be Sure To Order: Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover’s Story of Joy and Anguish

By Mark R. Levin, Best Selling Author of Liberty and Tyranny

My question is if we have 3.4 Million Dollars to build a safe turtle crossing in Florida with Stimulus Funds… how can California justify pulling the bulk of their shelter funds and killing thousands of healthy cats and dogs… after only holding them for 3-days???  Hello…  how about somebody in Congress or the Governor getting some stimulus funds to protect innocent animals in California?   – Ask Marion/Just One More Pet

Please write/call/fax your State and Federal Congress-members, Senators, Governor Schwarzenegger, and the Stimulus Czar for aid for our helpless animal friends, and keep up the pressure until the funds come through.  A quick note to Oprah would help too!!

Washington family to keep endangered Turtle

RIDGEFIELD, Wash., June 8 (UPI) – Washington state officials say a family will be allowed to keep their pet, a rare western pond turtle, but the animal will be owned by the state of California.

Barry Mason of Ridgefield and his wife Chae Yon said their family adopted the turtle when they encountered it as a baby 21 years ago while camping in Northern California. They said the turtle apparently was taken from their home during a birthday party for their son, Shon, in April, The (Vancouver, Wash.) Columbian reported Monday.

The reptile turned up in May at a pet store in Hazel Dell, Wash., but the family ran into an obstacle while reclaiming their beloved Mr. Turtle — his species is endangered.

Washington wildlife officials wrote Mason that it has decided to allow the family to keep the turtle under a few strict conditions: The animal will belong to the state of California, it cannot be transferred to another family without the department’s approval, and its final resting spot after its death will be determined by California and Washington wildlife officials.

Officials said they took into account the amount of time Mr. Turtle has spent in captivity, as well as its special connection to Mason’s son, Chol, who died of complications from a transfusion of HIV-positive blood a few years after he and his brother discovered him.

“We are making this exception due to the circumstances regarding the captive history and care for this turtle since 1988,” the department said in a letter to Mason.

Source:  Odd News

Posted:  Just One More Pet

Stop California SB 250 – Save Our Dogs and Our Rights

I hate “the sky is falling, the sky is falling” as much as the next gal, but you know, when big hunks of blue stuff dotted with clouds are crashing into your head while you walk across the street, what are you gonna do?

So, Californians who think that medical decisions about your animals should be made by you and your veterinarian and not the good folks in Sacramento, please check out this action alert from Laura Sanborn of Save Our Dogs, who says that despite recent amendments, the core provisions of California’s SB 250 are unchanged — and very similar to the defeated mandatory spay/neuter bill, last year’s AB 1634:

Violate an animal control law even once and you may never be allowed to own an intact dog ever again. One violation and your intact licenses can be denied or revoked at any time, forever. No one can have intact dogs under those conditions. Suppose your county unknowingly hires a PETA member as head of animal control. In an effort to balance the budget, this person revokes and denies all intact licenses, including yours, generating millions of dollars in fines. He/She is fired six months later but it’s too late, your dogs have already been surgically sterilized. It’s not possible to reattach the parts even if they decide to give you back your licenses.

This will cost local jurisdictions money. Say you get a citation for some minor animal control infraction. No longer can you just pay the ticket.  You have to fight tooth and nail every step of the way to preserve your future right to own intact dogs. If you lose you either get out of dogs or leave the state. Instead of getting a check for $50 in the mail, the county will have to hold a hearing, and maybe an appeal hearing, go to court, etc. In the end the county will pay thousands in staff costs to collect one $50 fine. It’s only $50 to the county, but it is your life with your dogs to you so you’ll do whatever it takes.

The new fees for having intact licenses denied or revoked almost seem designed to drive dog owners underground. The state has a poor licensing compliance rate already, 10-30% compared to over 90% in Calgary. If you apply for a license and it is denied, you can be charged an additional fee for having the license denied. Maybe the local agency doesn’t charge such a fee now, but they may when it is time for renewal. Just one more thing to drive people away. And of course what will they do if you don’t pay the fee? Impound and kill your dogs, of course. You can’t even sell your dogs or give them away. You have to have a intact license to do that.

All these new fees and punishments will be enforced with the threat of impounding your dog. Any law that impounds owned dogs or increases the cost of redeeming impounded dogs will kill dogs. Most owned dogs that are forcibly impounded are ultimately killed. Taking dogs from their owners is usually a death sentence. Increasing the costs to redeem a dog, especially with an 11% statewide unemployment rate, will kill dogs. Before they are killed, the impounded dogs will sit in the shelter for the state mandated waiting period. The state is required by the existing Hayden Act reimbursement mandate to pay local governments for this cost. The state already pays over $20 million a year for this reimbursement. How many more fire fighters, police officers, teachers, and nurses will have to be laid off to cover the addition reimbursement the state will have to pay out if SB 250 passes?

We fail to see the point of this bill. There is no action that is currently legal that SB 250 makes illegal. All it appears to accomplish is give local animal control the power to forcibly spay/neuter as many dogs as possible. What it does do is make responsible pet owners afraid of their local animal control agency. This will reduce licensing compliance and licensing fee income. It will increase the cost of enforcement. Fewer dogs will be adopted because the public will avoid contact with the shelters. More dogs will be impounded. More dogs will be killed.

SB 250, The Pet Owner Punishment Act, just kills dogs and strips pet owners and people in general of another right.

This is a terrible and stupid law. It will not do what it claims to want to do, and it will worsen the lives of pet owners, cost money, and kill pets. Please follow these simple action steps and help stop SB 250. Act now!

UPDATE: Gina mentioned this in the comments, but I’m adding it here, too: Alley Cat Allies is urging Californians to contact their legislators to speak against SB 250, saying it will hurt stray, homeless, and feral cats. You can read their take on it, and use their action tool, here.

Source:  PetConnection.com

SB 250 – full Senate votes this week!

Posted:  Just One More Pet

Related Articles:

• Pet Sterilzation Laws Raise Health Concerns

Help Pass California AB 233 – Pet Adoption Tax Credit

Dear California Animal Advocates,     

As you know, pet abandonment is on the rise. Shelters are overburdened, and the animal welfare community is seeking creative ways to get more people to choose adoption over purchasing pets in stores or online. That’s why the ASPCA is cosponsoring California Assembly Bill 233, new legislation before your state government.

AB 233 will encourage Californians to adopt pets from shelters by making adoption fees tax-deductible—qualified adopters can deduct up to $100 a year! This will help relieve the financial strain on overcrowded animal shelters and provide new beginnings for the state’s growing number of homeless pets.

What You Can Do
AB 233 is set to be heard before the California Assembly Revenue and Tax Committee on Monday, April 20, 2009. Visit the ASPCA Advocacy Center to email this committee and urge its members to support AB 233.

Thank you, California, for caring about animals.

Related Articles:

• Where there is a will…
• Economic Forecast: One Million Pets May Lose Homes in the U.S.
• Just How Bad Is The Economy??

Posted:  Marion Algier/Ask Marion –  JustOneMorePet