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Animal crusader takes on overcrowded animal shelters

California pet lovers prepare to do battle, again, over a bill that calls for mandatory spaying and neutering. At stake is nothing less than the lives of hundreds of thousands of cats and dogs.

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Once Judy Mancuso concluded
there was no way to find homes
for all the pets in this country, she
crafted a spay/neuter bill.

 

The bill that would make fixing your pets the law in California was actually born far away in a New Orleans shelter. That's where Judie Mancuso, who'd flown down from her home in Laguna Beach to aid the post-Hurricane Katrina animal rescue effort, concluded that enough was enough.

"When I walked into that shelter and saw that every animal in there was unaltered--animals who'd been running loose on the streets!--I thought, we have a huge crisis on our hands," she says. "I knew my next goal would be to put together a statewide spay/neuter bill."

Not being a resident of Louisiana, she settled for introducing the bill in her own state of California, and hopes other states will follow suit.

Chucking the "pinky in a dam" approach

Mancuso's activism began long before then. In 1990, a TV special on pet overpopulation turned her from a carefree, meat-eating high-tech professional into a vegan animal rescuer. "It showed all these healthy, beautiful, wonderful animals going to the euthanasia table," she recalls. "I was just blown away. I couldn't believe that's how we dealt with the problem."

She started raising money for shelters, fostering animals, trapping feral cats, and staffing adoption events. Just prior to her fateful trip to New Orleans, she'd even quit her information technology job to devote herself full-time to animal rescue work. She and her husband, Rolf Wicklund, had already decided to forgo kids for the cause.

But it felt a bit like sticking her pinky in a dam that was constantly springing more holes--an estimated 800,000 holes a year, according to one estimate of how many dogs and cats are abandoned in California each year. Roughly half those animals are euthanized.

"Every time we'd make some headway and save a couple animals, someone would dump more," says Mancuso wearily. "The litters just kept coming through the door. Oh my god, kitten season...!"

Crafting a new rescue strategy

While setting up yet another adoption event with fellow volunteers to place still more homeless animals, the talk kept circling back to the same question: Why aren't more people spaying and neutering their pets? Since Mancuso had observed, time and again, that many owners can't be bothered, she decided it was time for a new strategy.

When she got back to California, Mancuso asked Ed Bok, general manager of Animal Services in Los Angeles, to work with her on crafting a mandatory spay/neuter bill. He agreed, and the two started making the rounds, visiting animal care and control officers, veterinarians, police officers, breeders, and service dog groups for help in turning the idea into AB 1634, or the California Healthy Pets Act.

The American Kennel Club objects

When Assemblyman Lloyd Levine introduced the bill to the California assembly in February of 2007, it churned up a political storm the likes of which the capitol hadn't seen since the debate on gay marriage.

"It's amazing how motivated people are, both for and against," Assemblyman Anthony Adams told the Capitol Weekly last summer, at the height of the frenzy. "I've never been lobbied this hard on anything."

On the con side were many breeders and the American Kennel Club. Not only does the AKC object to taking the spay/neuter decision out of the owners' hands, says their spokesperson, Lisa Peterson, they doubt such a law would work. She argues that backyard breeders won't comply with the law, and reputable breeders will end up getting  [Continued]


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Comments

Judie Mancuso did not craft the original text of the California Spay Neuter Ordinance. In fact, once Judie became involved with the project, it went downhill. Isn't it ironic that her own home town doesn't have a spay/neuter ordinance, nor does any city where she has resided in the past ten years! She's manager to alienate a passel of the media and former supporters. Judie -- please leave the important issues ot others! ” — leestevens19..., Sep 06 2008

This bill NEEDS to be passed!! I am so sick of seeing the shelters packed full because people won't be responsible for animals. Do you know how much money it costs to euthanize all those animals? It's not free! Altering is not cruel to the animals; allowing them to have litter after unwanted litter that continue to reproduce and end up in shelters to be euthanized is cruelty! It's not unhealthy either. If we start fining these people, who knows, maybe it will lower our gas prices! Wishful thinking, I know, but if we reduce the number of animals being euthanized it will definitely save money. Something needs to be done. This has to stop. ” — Christy, Jul 08 2008

this is a great idea...there are similar proposed ordinances in Dallas right now. Of course, breeders and the AKC are against it, only because those people have a financial interest in such laws not passing. Follow the money. If you follow what is ethically right, and not the money, you will find that preventing the millions of births of unwanted dogs and cats will reduce much suffering (no vet care, sitting in cages, eventual euthanasia, etc etc) for American pets. I urge everyone to support this and similar legislation around the United States for the animals...not for humans. For once, it's not about us...it's about reducing the suffering of animals in this country. ” — mcevans, Apr 21 2008

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