Hope this is ok to post..
--- In
pet-law@NO SPAMMING.com, Walt <waltah@...> wrote:
The California Senate Local Government Subcommittee hearing is over.
Mr. Levine did pull his bill for now, asking that it be held over to
next January. The AKC has so announced.
Levine's last shot was to offer to give it 'secondary enforcement' --
MSN would still be the law but would be enforced only if "animal
control was called to your house because of other violations." That
didn't play too well, with one representative of A/C organizations
saying he really wanted to be able to discuss the specifics with the
his organizations rather than amending on the fly. The chair
expressed similar reservations.
I didn't hear all the speakers but I thought Bill Hemby of PetPac did
a particularly good job with presenting both 'the bill will not work'
-- he got that up front -- and the working dog view. Joan Miller was
very clear on the cat issues.
Levine's closing included a broadside at opponents who wouldn't work
with him. This is the first time I've heard him speak and I agree with
others who have: he's not misguided or even an opportunist, he's an AR
slimeball.
The committee still doesn't understand how working dogs are bred and
selected: They don't understand that while many come from breeders of
purebreds, those individuals don't self-identify as breeders of dogs
for the specific purpose. Rather they breed the breed, and over some
period of time -- often two or more years -- the dogs sort out
according to their talents and get jobs accordingly. So how do you
know which breeders are actually breeding working dogs?
(It seems to me that it's sort of like a specific high school baseball
team and major league baseball -- you can hardly say they 'train for
the majors' just because they have a good program and one player does
make it. Yet AB 1634 would say if the program's not registered, no
player could go on. Laura and others if that analogy is correct, do
you think it would help the committee?)
The presentations I heard were better on "it won't work" than in the
past but we still need to hammer that. We're still in the mode of
Levine saying he just wants to pass a bill that will work for
everyone, and lawmakers giving him a free pass on the need to DO
SOMETHING.
We will need to continue to work very hard on that so that when the
bill comes back, it will go nowhere. 'Secondary enforcement' is almost
precisely the same as what would have happened with the current bill
because no local A/C was going to do general enforcement, anyway.
Remember Judie M. saying something like "they're going to work it into
their daily routine"? 'Secondary' would still leave it up to animal
control to pick people they don't like, visit them, and say "Sorry,
you have to spay/neuter them all." From an AR A/C point of view,
that's the best of both worlds -- no major expense for them but they
can still nail all the Nasty Breeders.
So if A/C shows up at your door and says "Sorry, we've had a complaint
about barking" and then they tell you "S/N all of them" ... what? S/N
is the law and you're in violation. What good is it going to do to
strongly suspect that there WAS NO complaint? In the places where A/C
is AR controlled, good breeding would be zapped within a few months.
Great job California. Unfortunately we have much more work to do.
Walt Hutchens
Timbreblue Whippets