Curbing an Excess of Pets

Animal-control and leash laws have existed in the United States for nearly as long as farmers’ dogs have ravaged the neighbors’ chickens and rabies outbreaks have threatened human populations.

But never before has the national debate over pet control reached such a fevered, emotional peak as at present, with animal advocates pushing for legislation to reduce the number of unwanted animals euthanized in the nation’s shelters.

Aided by the speed and scope of the Internet, animal rights groups are gaining footholds in hundreds of communities, calling for anti-breeding laws to counter what they see as the cause of overpopulation. On the opposite side of the fence are animal breeders, who say proposed laws would infringe on basic freedoms.

Next week, the debate reaches the Los Angeles City Council, which will deal with a long-standing problem: too many dogs and cats running loose or ending up at shelters with death warrants if they are not adopted.

The city’s proposals, developed after a year of debate and public hearings, were unanimously recommended by the Animal Regulation Commission in January. They are based on a simple plan to stop the surplus of animals: discouraging breeding and teaching owners how to properly care for their pets.

The proposed solution involves a multi-pronged approach emphasizing enforcement, assistance and incentives.

“This marks the first time that we will have aggressively addressed this problem,” Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said at a news conference this month after the proposals were forwarded to the City Council for action. Alarmed by increasing reports of stray dogs running in the streets and dog attacks on people, the council had ordered city leaders to come up with a solution.

Under the proposal, the fee for owning an unaltered dog would increase from $30 annually to $100. A breeder’s fee, to be charged for each cat and dog that produces a litter, would rise to $100 from $50. The increase is designed to encourage owners to spay or neuter their pets. License fees for altered dogs would remain at $10. No license fee is required for cats, but those that are not altered would have to be kept indoors.

Animal regulation officials estimate that license revenues would remain about the same because they expect higher fees for unaltered animals to be offset by increased sterilization of pets to qualify for the lower rate.

The proposal would increase the number of enforcement officers from 51 to 66, with a five-member team assigned solely to enforcement of breeding rules. Dozens of volunteer organizations have pledged to help with massive education programs and low-cost and free spaying and neutering services.

Dan Knapp, director of Animal Services, said the proposal is designed to educate owners and enable them to comply with the rules rather than to penalize them. A six-month amnesty period is proposed before any fines or penalties would be levied. After that, owners would be given a 45-day warning period to comply or face $500 fines. Continued disobedience could result in a misdemeanor charge with a penalty of as much as six months in county jail and/or a $1,000 fine.

Although the City Council unanimously endorsed Ridley-Thomas’ call for a mandatory spaying/neutering law last year, it is uncertain what the final scope of the measure will be.

Many cities and counties around Southern California say they are awaiting the outcomes of the heated debate in Los Angeles and statewide legislative efforts in Sacramento before tackling their own pet overpopulation problems.

Orange County officials said they have been reading news accounts about proposed changes in Los Angeles, but have no plans to follow suit.

Riverside Fees Increased

Among the most recent rule changes in the region was one made last summer in Riverside County, where dog-license fees were raised for both altered and unaltered pets. A $3 increase, from $5 to $8, was initiated for a spayed or neutered dog, with discounts for licenses bought for two- or three-year spans. But the fee for unaltered dogs was doubled, from $25 to $50 for a one-year license. No discount is granted for multiyear licenses for unaltered animals, said Janis Upstone, Riverside animal care director.

No statistics are available yet on the impact of the Riverside change, which affects individual pet owners only and has no effect on breeders, who pay a flat annual fee for a kennel license that remains unchanged at $50 or $100, depending on the size of the operation.

Upstone said the increased fee for unaltered animals is designed to persuade owners who do not intend to breed their animals to have the pets neutered. “If they don’t see the apparent health benefits of spay/neuter, they certainly will see the benefits because of the savings,” she said.

The city of San Bernardino also recently doubled its annual license fees for unaltered dogs to $50, $41 more than the cost for an altered animal.

“A lot of the problem we are seeing in Southern California is the ‘backyard breeder,’ who usually is not really a breeder, but just somebody who has not yet had the animal spayed or neutered,” said Jon Cicirelli, San Bernardino’s animal control director. “That in itself is the problem with pet overpopulation.”

He said San Bernardino hopes the higher fee, in the long run, will force more people to alter their dogs. However, statistics have not been tabulated to determine the impact, Cicirelli said.

In San Diego County, an intense controversy involves a former key player in the development of Los Angeles’ proposal who has taken over as county animal control director. Dr. Dena Mangiamele, former chief veterinarian for Los Angeles, is proposing that impoundment penalties of as much as $400 be levied against owners of unaltered pets caught by special enforcement teams.

The penalty could be lowered to $60, plus other impound costs, if the owner agreed to a permanent microchip identification on the first offense and to spaying or neutering the pet after a second impoundment.

“We call it a pet crisis impact fee--for intact roaming dogs--because those are the animals that contribute most to the overpopulation,” Mangiamele said.

San Diego County supervisors in December rejected an earlier proposal by Mangiamele that called for increases in license fees and even greater impoundment penalties for owners of unaltered dogs.

The San Diego County proposal was opposed by both breeders and animal-rescue groups, which place animals from shelters in adoptive homes.

“When you put a high price for somebody to get their dog back, you tell them there is no value to the human bond,” said Kay Henderson, a spokeswoman for the coalition of breeders and rescuers known as Responsible Pet Lovers. “The problems in the shelters are caused by human owners who don’t make a lifetime commitment to their pet,” she said.

A revised proposal is expected to be brought before supervisors next month, but Henderson said the pet coalition is urging them to adopt an alternative proposal that calls for longer shelter hours and educational and training programs.

She called the Los Angeles proposals “bad legislation that is so punitive that people can’t take the risk of having a pet or think it is better to abandon it by turning it loose, rather than [giving it to] a shelter.”

Ventura County officials say their overpopulation problems are minimal. The county for years has routinely implanted identification microchips in animals adopted out of shelters and is able to quickly identify those that are returned, said Kathy Jenks, director of the county Department of Animal Regulation.

She also said the nature of the county’s quiet residential areas discourages backyard breeding. “If you’ve got a breeding operation, it’s noisy, and the neighbors are going to complain,” Jenks said.

Many Efforts Abandoned

Across the nation, some cities that served as models in developing new rules are now abandoning them as unworkable. Camden, N.J., recently abolished a $500 differential dog-license fee after it was virtually ignored, and Montgomery County, Md., eliminated many of its new rules and penalties after the county’s licensing rate plunged from 30% to 14%.

The approaches to solving problems are widely varied and the results just as complex.

Differentials in fees for altered and unaltered dogs and cats are common, but generally the number of licenses issued declines after fees for unaltered pets are hiked, according to surveys by animal organizations and The Times. Often the declines in licensing severely affect animal-control revenues and budgets.

Animal rights organizations point to San Mateo’s effort as a model of successful coercive legislation to control pet overpopulation. Indeed, the San Francisco suburb was touted for producing “an outstanding 15% drop in the shelter population,” according to a Los Angeles Animal Services report to the commission here.

But critics point out that the euthanasia rate was dropping faster before adoption of the San Mateo ordinance and that after passage, dog licensing declined dramatically, few breeders obtained required permits and 18 out of the county’s 20 cities rejected the rules as unworkable.

Los Angeles city officials, in reports to the animal commission, said legislation was studied in other areas but no single example was found as a perfect model. However, department officials said at a council committee hearing this month that L.A.’s proposal is closest to that used in the Seattle area’s King County, which emphasizes an aggressive door-to-door licensing program. Still, the number of pets licensed is estimated at only 20% to 25% of the pet population. But adoptions reached nearly 5,000 last year, compared with only 1,500 a decade ago.

On the other hand, critics, including Charles Ober, a Tarzana cat fancier who has studied ordinances throughout the country, point out that while annual license revenues in Kings County increased by about $360,000, expenditures are up more than $1.1 million.

Ober and others fighting to protect breeding rights cite San Antonio as a better example of dealing with problems. Instead of demanding breeding permits, the city, backed by its army of volunteer animal rescuers, promotes voluntary spaying/neutering programs, education in the care and training of pets and strict enforcement of leash laws.

Emphasis is placed on low-income areas where problems are the worst, partly because of cultural beliefs, said Mary Beth Duerler, president of Responsible Pet Owners Alliance, a coalition of 2,000 volunteers. She said demographics in San Antonio--the eighth most populous city in the nation, with the second highest poverty rate--are similar to those in Los Angeles.

Before enforcement of the leash laws in 1996, Duerler said, “we had animals all over the streets here. We used to think everybody was just irresponsible. But we found out that they really are just ignorant about how to care for their animals.”

Volunteers staff a hotline to help owners overcome training problems with pets, such as house-breaking and stopping nuisance barking.

As a result, Duerler said the number of animals impounded decreased from 54,000 in 1998 to 47,000 last year. San Antonio officials hope to implement, by late this year, a program in which owners can attend a “pet school” for reduction or forgiveness of fines imposed for violation of the leash laws.

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Times staff writer Ann L. Kim contributed to this story.

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Dogs and Dollars

The city of Los Angeles is considering higher licensing fees that would give it one of the country’s toughest ordinances on spaying and neutering of dogs. In addition, the city is considering doubling its fee for breeders of dogs and cats to $100. Below are statistics from the city of Los Angeles and three counties on dog license fees and on dogs handled by animal control departments:

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L.A. City L.A. City L.A. Orange Ventura Proposed Current County County County Unaltered-dog fee $100 $30 $20 $25 $30 Spayed/neutered-dog fee $10 $10 $10 $11 $10 Dogs impounded 46,896 61,004 18,331 8,871 Dogs adopted out 7,904 8,229 4,908 1,877 Dogs returned to owner 4,274 7,263 5,477 2,222 Dogs euthanized 32,623 45,208 7,946 4,715

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Researched by Ann L. Kim / Los Angeles Times

Note: Figures are for 1999, except for Orange County’s, which are for 1998.