I have been helping to adopt out pets from a local shelter. It is not a no kill. Very sad. this has got to stop.
I am interested in hearing anything anybody knows about the places that have successfully cut way back on unwanted pets by their licensing laws. I talked to someone that used to live in Conn. and for example, all pets have to be licensed and if they are neutered/spayed it’s like $25 and if they are not it is $125.
Does anybody have any experience with this/ How did they get this law passed?
thanks for any insights. I was at the shelter saturday and met a bunch of wonderful pets, three of which are now my fosters. So many of the ones I met will be gone in a few days.
sucks.
Personally, I am not sure that a licensing requirement will do anything.
Even in counties where pets are required to be licensed, people don’t always license. They would rather run the risk of paying a fine, someday, IF they get caught, than pony up whatever fee year after year over the life of the dog.
I think it has been proved successful in many areas. I need to find out some facts.
I have never lived in a city that doesn’t require licensing, and I have never once been asked to show my dog’s current license, even by law enforcement officers petting my dogs. At this point, I’m pretty convinced it’s just a way for the city to get another couple bucks a year out of its residents. I am vigilant about licensing my dogs, but I know plenty of people who aren’t.
If municipalities were more honest about why they have licensing programs (in order to create revenue), then less people would license their pets. If they had licensing programs because they cared about the well-being of animals, then they would also spend the requisite funding necessary to enforce said licensing laws. I’ve never heard of anyone getting in trouble for having an unlicensed dog, except for perhaps in the case of a dog that severely injured someone.
This is my experience as well. The only time licensing comes into play where I live is when your animal gets picked up by animal control and you go get it. If it’s not licensed, you pay a fine plus the licensing fee.
I’ve never bothered to license my animals. What’s the point? They don’t get loose and picked up by animal control.
Licensing pays for animal control, doesn’t it? We have a very nice shelter. You need funds for that.
Licensing and neuter laws do nothing except drive good, legitimate dog professionals out of the area. You’ll lose groomers, boarding kennels, show breeders (I don’t know anyone who puts a CH on their b*tch before breeding who doesn’t also do rescue)
It makes it very hard for rescues to operate, and for people (like me) who rescue and re-home a dog here and there.
All it means is if I decide to foster a few, or pick up that stray, all of the sudden I’m over my limit, or that I have one week to get this rescue fixed or a vindictive neighbor or just the local busybody can make all kinds of trouble for people trying to do the right thing.
It seems like that’s all it ever makes trouble for. The folks who have a litter under their porch every 6 months don’t even slow down.
If you really, really want to put a dent in pet overpopulation, do everything you can to get free/cheap neutering in your area. Have drives, call up the local vets and see if they’ll do it at cost once a month, call up the nearest vet hospital and see if they can send some students out, find them somewhere to operate.
Making spaying cheap and easy is the only thing that has been proven to work.
[QUOTE=shea’smom;6371106]
Licensing pays for animal control, doesn’t it? We have a very nice shelter. You need funds for that.[/QUOTE]
Our city animal shelter is a 501©3 run off of a majority of private donations earned from fundraising events and biannual donation campaigns. Our shelter improved DRAMATICALLY 10 years ago when it got out from beneath the city government and became a non-profit. Adoption rates when WAY up, euthanasia rates went way down, rescue and foster networking got set up, and the community got involved. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a MAJOR improvement. The licensing system has not changed in the past 30 years.
Actual animal control is still under the umbrella of the Health Department and is pretty useless.
ETA: The biggest thing that changed our animal shelter was the hiring of a skilled development director. She’s brought in what every non-profit needs: money and support. The fundraisers she puts on are kid-friendly adoption-centric events that also provide adult entertainment (read: beer, music, local food, dogs in costume). The shelter has done a great job aligning itself with our city and making a real effort to get involved with other cultural-based projects that are trying to make the community a better place. As such, people that live here support it because they see the organization making it a better place for people to live, even if they don’t have (or even like) pets. Going to this shelter’s events is really like going to a festival, and the adoptable pets are icing on the cake. Local businesses and restaurants get a lot of exposure and often compete to take part because community members WANT to attend.
[QUOTE=Riverotter;6371111]
Licensing and neuter laws do nothing except drive good, legitimate dog professionals out of the area. You’ll lose groomers, boarding kennels, show breeders (I don’t know anyone who puts a CH on their b*tch before breeding who doesn’t also do rescue)
It seems like that’s all it ever makes trouble for. The folks who have a litter under their porch every 6 months don’t even slow down.
If you really, really want to put a dent in pet overpopulation, do everything you can to get free/cheap neutering in your area. Have drives, call up the local vets and see if they’ll do it at cost once a month, call up the nearest vet hospital and see if they can send some students out, find them somewhere to operate.
Making spaying cheap and easy is the only thing that has been proven to work.[/QUOTE]
I agree that drastically raising the licensing fees only punishes the responsible owners. The ones who are letting a bitch roam free aren’t licensing their dogs anyways. Here, our dog license fees go partly to the individual towns and mostly to the state animal welfare fund. The ironic part of all of this is that while only dogs are licensed, a huge chunk of the animal welfare budget goes to provide minimal cost spay/neuter, with 90% of the funds going for cats.
Asking the local vet hospital to cut prices isn’t really fair or realistic. Many already participate in state low cost programs. And the fees we charge for routine spay neuter are just barely above cost. When you consider the extent of time and skill involved for a major surgery, dog spays (at least around here) are cheap. $350 to $400 for major abdominal surgery is a bargain. Almost every veterinarian I know loses money doing spays and neuters. To me, if you decide to get a dog, this should be a planned expense, just like your supply of heartworm prevention.
Most vet students can barely spay a dog when they graduate, let alone during school. There’s also some very different attitudes towards pet ownership in different parts of the country. I live in an area that imports puppies from the south because our demand so greatly exceeds supply. I’ve chatted with people in other areas and they report discouraging attitudes. Spay and neuter clinics are available, but it’s not “manly” to neuter your dog, etc.
[QUOTE=shea’smom;6370964]
I have been helping to adopt out pets from a local shelter. It is not a no kill. Very sad. this has got to stop.
I am interested in hearing anything anybody knows about the places that have successfully cut way back on unwanted pets by their licensing laws. I talked to someone that used to live in Conn. and for example, all pets have to be licensed and if they are neutered/spayed it’s like $25 and if they are not it is $125.
Does anybody have any experience with this/ How did they get this law passed?
thanks for any insights. I was at the shelter saturday and met a bunch of wonderful pets, three of which are now my fosters. So many of the ones I met will be gone in a few days.
sucks.[/QUOTE]
Push for low cost spay/neuter options for the immediate area, and education on responsible pet ownership…you’ll get far better results than with laws that are hard to enforce and expensive to enforce. States with lower rates of unwanted animals achieved that not because of licensing laws, but rather education and access to low cost vetting.
Licensing fees usually just go into a general fund and not specifically animal control or the shelter. It’s difficult to get compliance and a lot of people simply surrender their animals instead of paying for a spay or neuter.
I think a voluntary, low cost spay and neuter program is much better. A lot of people are willing to alter their dogs, but they aren’t willing or able to pay the cost at a traditional vet service. Removing the cost barrier can help alter a large number of animals, and I think that this is the first barrier that should be addressed.
Liscensing laws don’t really do much. You’re looking at an enforcement issue.
So what if someone doesn’t liscense their dog? Is the city going to have a round-up? What are they going to do with all the dogs? Seize them? Where will they put them? Then there are the issues of due process- that’s called manpower. Then there’s the issue of so what if they tack on fines and fees- how will they collect? Garnishments? More fines? Make it so you can’t register your car if you have an outstanding pet liscense fine? You’re looking at manpower and time to enforce piddly-widdly little fines.
In the grandscheme of troubles afflicting city and state budgets enforcing/allocating to PET liscensing is a big “yeah, right. Dream on, tree hugger” And as much as I love my pets and hate to see ferals breeding in squallar, I’ve got to agree: this is NOT a priority!!!
Low cost spay/neuter works. But down here in TX you have men (like my husband) who see no problem spaying a female but cringe over neutered males. Even when I showed him his kitty’s spay scar vs the simplicity of castration (maybe I scared him???) he still mumbles about it. He’s never had an intact male anything around so I figure the annoyances will end the mumbles quickly. 
You have to make it as easy and cheap as possible for people to spay/neuter, but you can’t get past the stupidity “I’ll make money” and the “OH NO, MY DOGGY’S BALLS!”
I live way down south out in the sticks - but if there was cheap spaying around here people would use it.
The local rescue does a yearly drive to raise money and also gets a yearly grant, they then give out vouchers and there is a waiting list. People sign up a month in advance.
Yes, you get some machismo types … but you know what? I’ve never had a tomcat have 4 kittens on my couch (unlike the last barn kitty that got dumped here).
And I’ve never picked up a male stray dog who had puppies 2 weeks later (unlike the last stray female I picked up).
“Just” doing the females is really all you need to do to put a dent in the population. Because even if you get 99% of the boys, that one last hold-out is all it takes, but if you get 99% of the girls, you have eliminated 99% of your unwanted litter problem, so it’s not the machismo types you have to worry about.
As far as the poster who said it’s not fair to ask vets to donate time or space - if you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If they don’t want to, no one is going to put a gun to their heads. Here, we have one vet who is more then willing to donate her time and do spays at cost - but she doesn’t own her clinic. So we need to find a clinic that is willing to let her use an OR for the purpose, most vet clinics here close on the weekend so it’s not as if it would be taking earnings from anyone.
How are we supposed to find that if we don’t ask? I don’t know of a single low-cost clinic (and I’ve worked with several) that doesn’t run by the grace of volunteers.
And I can not speak for every vet school everywhere, but in FL there are permanent low-cost clinics that are entirely staffed by final year students. It’s good experience for them and they get graded. I have also had dogs and cats spayed by vet students in NY and PA.
Please pm me the name of the university that is giving degrees in veterinary medicine to people who can’t do a simple cat spay so that I know to not take any of my pets to a graduate from there.
Here in Ocala, Ive seen the Neuter Commuter parked in several different areas, one being the Sheriffs Department. Its a big bus that I assume is set up to do cheap, if not free, neutering. You used to be able to go to the local Humane Society Thrift shop and buy a coupon from them for a spay for your pet. I think it was $25. Dont know if they still do that.
I agree with everyone who says low cost spay/neuter options are the way to go.
I live in Buffalo and 95% of the vets are ridiculous. They want roughly $350 (spread over at least two appointments) when all is said and done. My vet, who is one of the lone outliers who charges reasonable rates, goes completely ballistic and hollers about “THESE VETS!!” and anesthesia for a cat costing $1. (He charges a six pack to fix a cat.)
Put into perspective, my 3BR house cost less than $70k and my 15 year mortgage is $650 a month. And mine is by no means a dump; you can get houses for $35k here.
So $350 is A LOT of money in this area.
Probably there would be less of an overpopulation problem if people didn’t have to pay their mortgage again to neuter their pet.
I think vet care in general has gotten out of control. Recently a co-worker had two dogs neutered and the cost was close to $700. If I take my dogs in for anything but routine, I can pretty much estimate my charges to be well into $400-500. Last year I took my three dogs in for their shots: my bill was close to $600 for the shots and a basic health check.
Sorry if this is somewhat OT but the topic opened the door for me to express my displeasure with the costs of vets in general.
I have also found the costs of Rx’s for dogs is sometimes as high as 3x the difference between local vets.
Thanks for letting me vent
I’m in the same area as meup and I agree with her 100%. There is a low cost clinic in the area and they’re booked about 3 months out. There are a few vets that do the Friends of Animals vouchers, but other than that, you’re stuck paying $250-400 depending on where you go. I paid $550 in January for my dog - $125 of that was for the spay. The rest was for a dentistry with 23 tooth extractions, anal gland removal and mass removal/biopsy. But, that was going to a vet out in the sticks.
I’d really like to know who the six pack vet is… Is his first name Peter by any chance?
[QUOTE=Snowflake;6372641]
I’d really like to know who the six pack vet is… Is his first name Peter by any chance?[/QUOTE]
Yes it is, and he neutered my dog and gave him a full round of vaccinations plus a heartworm test and boarded him for the day while I was at work for a grand total of…
$105.
I love him. He did a hock surgery on a colt of mine for a grand total of $500. And that included putting a screw in his growth plate and removing it once his leg straightened out. And he let me scrub in and watch. It was cool!!
I am interested in hearing anything anybody knows about the places that have successfully cut way back on unwanted pets by their licensing laws.
there aren’t any.
However, the comments about neutering suggest that most unwanted pets are the product of unwanted/ random breedings. That may be true in some parts of the country, but in many other parts of the country, if you go look at the unwanted pets, you’ll observe a striking absence of babies- young puppies and kittens aren’t abundant. The unwanted pets, instead, are usually older animals, mostly between the ages of 6 months to 3 years. Most of these animals were originally the product of planned breedings, were purchased as babies, had homes for awhile, and ended up homeless because…
someone dumped them.
This is the real cause of unwanted animals- people treat them as if they were disposable.
“I’m having a baby- fido must go” “we’re moving- fido must go” “we’re tired of having to spend time caring for fido- he must go” “fido needs shots and we don’t want to pay for them- fido must go” “we bought new furniture- fido must go” the list of stupid excuses goes on and on.
How you combat this problem I am not sure. In many cases, education on how to train dogs might help a few; in others, making people think for a few days before getting a pet in the first place might help; cultural disgust with people who casually discard pets would certainly help.
