Text of the bill is HERE.
ALL it does is allow local municipalities to enact stricter punishments than the state law. Seriously. After reading it I didn’t understand why all the Animal Rights people were jumping for joy over it.
Then I read THIS article.
Money quote:
“I think any police officer should be able to pull over and say let me see your license and paperwork. And if that dog is not spayed or neutered, it would be wonderful if they can fine that individual,” says McNeely.
Christine McNeely is the executive director of the local Humane Association of Central NY.
There are SO MANY things wrong with that statement its not even funny.
First off, can you say HUMAN rights violation, for the cops to be able to stop you and ask for “your paperwork” just because you happen to be with a dog??
Then lets look at the stupidity of mandatory spay/neuter laws, which do NOT work. If you have a decent low cost spay/neuter program then the only folks who haven’t spayed or neutered their dog or cat either aren’t going to anyway, or don’t know about the program. All the law does is fine them, force them to give up the animal when they can’t afford the fine, at which point they go to the BYB down the road and get another puppy. Meanwhile the dog they gave up is sitting at the local pound and probably getting put down for “space”.
And then there’s recent research on the fairly serious negatives of spaying/neutering dogs at an early age, with some research pointing out negatives for spay/neuter at ANY age. Seriously, we’ve known for a long time that the removal of hormones does bad things to HUMANS, why we ever thought it wasn’t going to do bad things to other animals I do NOT understand.
And, basic fact of life here, if you legislate out all the responsible hobby breeders by making it so incredibly expensive to breed, the only ones left breeding will be the puppy mills who can afford to pay for whatever permits are needed, and the BYBers who don’t care or don’t know about the law and slide under it for various reasons! Yup, laws like this just make it MORE possible to find a puppy from a puppy mill. Not less.
If they REALLY want to put the puppy mills out of business then they need to forbid the selling of cats/dogs in petstores or other retail settings, and they need to forbid the selling of them online. The GOOD breeders don’t sell online, they list their litters planned, and show pictures of the pups, but no transactions are done via the website.
But of course that won’t happen, cause the folks behind the puppy mills have money, and money talks when it comes to politics!