Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Insanity in Santa Paula

The Neuter Nannies are at it again. Santa Paula is the next city in California poised to mandate that owners and their veterinarians inflict unnecessary and harmful surgery on pets in the community. Up on the agenda for the next city council meeting is a delayed vote on a mandatory spay-neuter-microchip ordinance.

At the hearing two days ago, not just one but TWO local veterinarians (they are the experts, right?) testified against mandated neutering of pets. Despite the evidence presented that spay/neuter has adverse effects on health, the city plans to amend and pass their proposal. As long as they toss a few “exemptions” into the pot to remove some objections, they have no qualms about squelching the right of an owner in consultation with his veterinarian to decide what is best for his dog's health.

Kiss nice dogs like this goodbye when the neuter nannies sink their talons into your community


The local shelter, “Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center” boasts of being the nation's first open-admission no-kill shelter. According to the claim on their Facebook page, 99% of the animals who enter their shelter, LIVE. Yet representatives from this group are still not satisfied. Like most animal rights fanatics, they want to spay-neuter pets into oblivion. The SPARC is backing the new ordinance and their representatives spoke in favor of it at Monday night's City Council meeting.

The rescue brigade will continue to cry “overpopulation” until there is not one single animal entering a shelter, anyplace. I hate to break the news to everybody, but that can only happen when there are no more pets left PERIOD. 

And this group also had the temerity to contradict the testimony of the two local veterinarians, who were concerned about the adverse health effects of spay and neuter. Here's a quote from a local newspaper article:

Representatives from the Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center, meanwhile, urged council to approve the ordinance. Health problems, such as musculoskeletal injuries and cancers, occur in many animals whether they are spayed and neutered or not, they said.

Brilliant! Whoever was quoted here probably has his GED. I'm sure he knows better than two local veterinarians about the health effects of spay-neuter.

This person is so ignorant that he can't discern the difference between INJURIES and DEVELOPMENTAL problems resulting from lack of hormones. He is unaware of (or just plain doesn't care about) the many, many studies in multiple breeds that prove that cancer risks are many times higher for spayed/neutered animals than those who are intact. And, he isn't going to be paying the veterinary bills for the owners whose dogs become lame, hypothyroid, or aflicted with bone cancer or hemangiosarcoma. When the dog becomes more aggressive towards humans (as studies have found to be the effect of spay/neuter) will he be able to rehome the dog or will it have to be killed?

Here's the viewpoint of Santa Paula's esteemed mayor:

Mayor Martin Hernandez said he supported the ordinance, noting that those speaking against it were not from Santa Paula. He said requiring animals to be fixed is good for the community, and regulations are necessary."If laws were for the responsible people we wouldn't have people getting DUI's daily," he said. "Do you think that people are tending to their animals more than they take responsibility for driving under the influence of alcohol? I don't think so."
Well, that settles the debate, then. Ignore your two local veterinarians and the reams of knowledgable dog people from the Ventura County-based Kennel Clubs, who will have to deal with your stupid ordinance. Or maybe, their dog breeders could simply refuse to sell puppies to anyone who lives in Santa Paula. There's a great benefit for your community. No pets.

Good for the community? In which universe, exactly? Where is the evidence? Mandatory spay-neuter has NEVER been proven beneficial to ANY community where it has been enacted. In fact, licensing and rabies vaccination compliance DECREASES. Shelter intakes INCREASE. And FEWER dogs are reclaimed from shelters! Low-income people and seniors will be disproportionately hit with the higher costs. It's expensive to have the unnecessary surgery done, and even more costly when the dog gets cancer and dies an early, expensive death.

And “tending to their animals” is equated with foisting unnecessary, life-sucking surgery on them? How stupid is that? Well, we can't expect genius from someone who draws a parallel between animal ownership and drinking alcohol.

As if all this wasn't ridiculous enough, the ordinance also requires the Animal Services Coordinator, who more than likely has ZERO expertise in dog breeding, to administer a written test on humane breeding practices. If you fail the written test, no breeding permit for you.

Microchips are fine but they can rarely travel in the body, and the insertion process is not without risk. Again, the owner should have the right to decide if he wants to use a chip or if he prefers a collar with tag or a tattoo for ID purposes.

Santa Paula, the latest in the string of Neuter Nanny cities here in our state.

The article is here:
http://www.vcstar.com/news/local/santa-paula/santa-paula-delays-vote-on-spay-and-neuter-ordinance-276d0d30-ddb4-4e55-e053-0100007f47ef-363296281.html

3 comments:

  1. Here's how we fix this: Class Action lawsuit.

    Much as I hate the process as being basically a scam that enriches lawyers and does nothing much for clients -- in this case the object is to make it too expensive for cities and shelters to continue their spay/neuter craze. The combined cost to owners just in a single city must run into the millions of dollars at today's veterinary fees, which rival fees for human medicine. So add that up, tack on a penalty (3x actual damages is usually good) and ...surely there's some lawyer who is willing to take it on for the chance of striking it rich. For this purpose, we want a shyster with a track record of fleecing deep pockets.

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  2. How dare these people declare that s/n is not harmful to the health of the dogs when there is so much evidence to support it? Just because they haven’t read it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And just because some people show up at a hearing and say it’s bunk, WITHOUT any supporting evidence doesn’t mean that what they say is true. How dare they make laws that affect the lives of people’s pets, and their right to treat them as they see fit, based on their unresearched and uneducated opinions? What gives them the right to play God?

    Of course it isn’t just Santa Paula, it’s the crux of this entire battle. I’m only saying what we’ve all been saying for years, but it continues to fall on deaf ears.

    Their stray/roaming problem? In Santa Paula? Maybe in downtown L.A., but I’d love to see how many stray/roaming dogs they pick up every day. My dogs don’t roam, never have, so what effect would sterilizing them have on the dogs that do? And what do roaming dogs have to do with pet overpopulation? Maybe one in a hundred might get a bitch pregnant…oooh, now there’s a MAJOR overpopulation problem, especially when they probably haven’t seen 100 roaming dogs in a year.

    And how insane can you get? They don’t plan to enforce the law, just turn people against each other, nor do they want to enforce the laws they already have, even when such measures are proven to be effective. So what is the point of any of these laws?

    Sticking their fingers in their ears and singing "lalalalalala" doesn’t make it go away or mean it doesn’t exist.

    OK, my Santa Paula rant was ov erdue and couldn’t be held back. I now return you to your regular programming…

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