Woochifer
06-25-2004, 12:28 PM
Boy oh boy, did the Guvernator pick the wrong fight to plug what equates to about 0.07% of California's projected budget deficit.
Gov. Arnold is pushing to repeal a 1998 law that requires animal shelters to hold stray pets for at least six days. The main effect of this law would be less time for families with lost pets to find their pets, and for rescue groups to pull adoptable pets out of the shelters and place them into foster homes until a permanent home can be found. The repeal of the law would also eliminate the requirement for for shelters to contact pet owners if the contact information can be found on a microchip scanner, and for animal abusers to pay for the vet bills on the pets that they abuse.
I don't know about any of you, but our dog is treated like a member of the family. He got his tags and he's microchipped, and we installed a doggie door in the side of the house so he can access both the house and the yard during the day. We also built an "escape resistant" dog run in the side yard since his adoption papers indicated in big bold letters that the little monster is an ESCAPE ARTIST. We know first hand that he's very inventive when it comes to finding new ways to get out (fortunately, he hasn't wandered beyond the front yard, but who knows what he'd do if he saw a cat or a squirrel down the street), so anything that shortens the mandatory holding period at animal shelters is pretty worrisome to us.
We know that the shelters closest to where we live have microchip scanners. What if they could obtain our contact info through that scan, but never bother to contact us because they are no longer required to? With the much shorter holding requirement, a pet can be put down with less than a day for owners to try and track their stray pets down in those shelters that have no weekend or evening hours (this is pretty much how the City of L.A. shelters operate; their limited hours of operation and adoption procedures make it impossible to adopt a pet or find a stray without taking a day or two off from work, and they put down 34,000 animals last year).
Arnie has been very popular thus far as Guv, and shown a surprising capacity to compromise and talk to both sides on otherwise volatile issues. I don't see any benefit to taking on pet owners! I mean, my wife is about as non-political and moderate (i.e. a swing voter) as you can get, yet she just forwarded an e-mail to me about this and she's telling me to circulate it to everybody we know! She could care less about following the day-to-day goings with politics and Washington scandals, but THIS is something that's got her completely up in arms. If my wife is this riled up, it can't be a good thing for Arnie to keep pushing this issue.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-animals25jun25,1,3609137.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Gov. Arnold is pushing to repeal a 1998 law that requires animal shelters to hold stray pets for at least six days. The main effect of this law would be less time for families with lost pets to find their pets, and for rescue groups to pull adoptable pets out of the shelters and place them into foster homes until a permanent home can be found. The repeal of the law would also eliminate the requirement for for shelters to contact pet owners if the contact information can be found on a microchip scanner, and for animal abusers to pay for the vet bills on the pets that they abuse.
I don't know about any of you, but our dog is treated like a member of the family. He got his tags and he's microchipped, and we installed a doggie door in the side of the house so he can access both the house and the yard during the day. We also built an "escape resistant" dog run in the side yard since his adoption papers indicated in big bold letters that the little monster is an ESCAPE ARTIST. We know first hand that he's very inventive when it comes to finding new ways to get out (fortunately, he hasn't wandered beyond the front yard, but who knows what he'd do if he saw a cat or a squirrel down the street), so anything that shortens the mandatory holding period at animal shelters is pretty worrisome to us.
We know that the shelters closest to where we live have microchip scanners. What if they could obtain our contact info through that scan, but never bother to contact us because they are no longer required to? With the much shorter holding requirement, a pet can be put down with less than a day for owners to try and track their stray pets down in those shelters that have no weekend or evening hours (this is pretty much how the City of L.A. shelters operate; their limited hours of operation and adoption procedures make it impossible to adopt a pet or find a stray without taking a day or two off from work, and they put down 34,000 animals last year).
Arnie has been very popular thus far as Guv, and shown a surprising capacity to compromise and talk to both sides on otherwise volatile issues. I don't see any benefit to taking on pet owners! I mean, my wife is about as non-political and moderate (i.e. a swing voter) as you can get, yet she just forwarded an e-mail to me about this and she's telling me to circulate it to everybody we know! She could care less about following the day-to-day goings with politics and Washington scandals, but THIS is something that's got her completely up in arms. If my wife is this riled up, it can't be a good thing for Arnie to keep pushing this issue.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-animals25jun25,1,3609137.story?coll=la-home-headlines