A Humane Law Backfires

Animal shelters across the state are increasingly overcrowded, which leads to disease and to injury when dogs and cats crammed together in small cages get into fights. That makes animals unadoptable and hampers officers’ ability to pick up more strays on city streets.

The overcrowding is largely the unintended consequence of a 1999 bill by former state Sen. Tom Hayden that extended the time that shelters had to hold strays before euthanizing them. By requiring shelter directors to keep all stray dogs and cats four or six business days, depending on certain conditions, instead of three, Hayden’s bill has backfired on the very animals he hoped to help. The measure has forced shelters to kill adoptable animals the day they hit the deadline to make room for even dangerous or severely ill animals that are certain to be euthanized later.

The problems could get worse July 1, when a second provision of the Hayden bill will require shelters to hold animals relinquished by owners for the same time as strays, rather than the current three days. This could increase shelter populations by one-third.

In February, Sen. Edward Vincent (D-Inglewood) introduced SB 1931, a sensible measure to keep the holding period as it is. Vincent, however, is enduring a furious outcry. One Hayden bill proponent, UCLA Law School professor Taimie L. Bryant, fumed in a letter to Vincent last month, “Owner-relinquished pets ... are usually in much better shape than strays.... Why should these animals die in our shelters? Because shelter employees do not like cleaning up after them?” Other critics include the San Francisco “animal rescue” activists who argued to save Hera, the dog that helped fatally maul a 33-year-old woman.

The ridiculousness of “rehabilitating” a proven dangerous dog aside, decisions about which animals have a chance of finding a home should fall to shelter directors, not to clueless state legislators or the loudest political constituencies.

No one wants to kill animals, but these hard choices are forced on shelters by tiny budgets and multiple needs, including making streets safer by rounding up strays. Forcing longer deadlines on shelters without adding money and space would only increase the misery.