CA AB 1634 was first introduced February 23, following hot on the heels of the Louisville Metro Council’s new animal control ordinance. Dog lovers were still grappling with disbelief about the passage of one of the nation’s most draconian anti-dog laws. Originally intended as a measure to control dangerous dogs, in its final incarnation it featured equally severe restrictions on breeders and pet owners. Keeping more than four dogs or cats, or more than one intact animal required a $300 license and granted animal control agencies the right to conduct unannounced inspections and impound animals belonging to anyone in violation. Even more frightening, enforcement procedures, which could potentially affect anyone with a pet, were solely under the direction of a single individual, the director of Animal Control. The scope for abuse that this type of legislation entails has been graphically documented since the twelfth century “Forest Laws” granted identical powers to local authorities. History has consistently confirmed not only their ineffectiveness, but the ongoing abuse that inevitably accompanies such power.

Despite strenuous local and national efforts to defeat the Louisville ordinance, it went into effect in January. When the CA bill was introduced a few weeks later, AKC saw the writing on the wall. Communications and Legislation departments went into overdrive. They hired a lobbyist and posted ongoing bulletins to their website. They did countless newspaper, TV and radio interviews to publicize the potential damage of this bill. In addition, they contacted all 5000 AKC clubs and every CA dog owner in their database, and sponsored a Lobby Day to ensure that CA dog owners were prepared mount effective opposition. In other words, the formerly media shy AKC mustered their significant resources and aggressively sought every opportunity to get the message across.

There is no question that this approach is essential to success within our democratic process. But they also hammered home the strategic point of most legislative decisions. Money talks. We may have lost the battle in Jefferson County but the financial after shocks provided a major selling point to make a case against AB 1634.

The Kentuckiana Cluster has ranked as AKC’s largest show event for many years. Until now, it was big and getting bigger as more specialty clubs, advertisers and vendors cam aboard each year. In radical contrast, this year’s entries plummeted nearly 50%. To confirm the reasons for this sudden drop in support for one of America’s favorite shows, AKC conducted a poll revealing that 60% of exhibitors cited the Jefferson County ordinance as their reason for boycotting the show. Of those that did attend, more than 70% determined not to stay in Jefferson County or spend money at the show to prevent the county from benefiting from tax revenue. Although many dog fanciers advocated canceling the show as a sign of protest, the attendees did their best to protest the actions of a municipal entity attempting to deny their civil rights.

This demonstration was not going to change things in Louisville but it clearly illustrated what organized effort can accomplish on a city wide level. If it can happen in Jefferson County, why not CA?

AKC reports that their National Championship show, spanning five days, generated $21.7 million revenue for the CA economy last year. This could easily be exceeded because rather than rotating the show back to FL, it is scheduled to remain in Long Beach for the next two years. In light of this, AKC clubs immediately began demanding that this show (and others) be moved to nearby out of state locations. The bill’s supporters countered by claiming a $250 million annual expenditure dealing with the state’s shelter population.  The monetary figures presented by both sides may or may not be true but the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in tourist revenue quite possibly tipped the balance against the bill’s narrow margin of support. It is reported that AB 1634 squeaked through the representatives to the senate because two representatives were pressured to revise their votes.

Another issue that contributed to halting its progress was the widespread skepticism regarding the value and intent of mandatory/spay neuter ordinances. Mandatory Spay/Neuter is just one form of legislation being championed as a tool to end animal suffering and reduce shelter populations. Many parts of the US and Europe already have guardianship designations for pets, license requirements which include privatized inspections for hobby breeders and multiple pet owners, bans or designations of specific breeds as dangerous, publicly accessible licensing and ID databases of information on pet owners, mandated care requirements, laws permitting private citizens or local agencies to seize animals they consider at risk, and prohibitions on linebreeding, inbreeding or producing breeds designated as unhealthy.

Since 1987 the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals has sought to ban many breeds due to purported inherent health defects. A partial list of these includes the Airedale Terrier, Australian Terrier, Basset Hound, Bedlington Terrier, Blue Merle Collie, Bloodhound, Boston Terrier, Boxer, Brussels Griffon, Bull Terrier, Bulldog, Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Chihuahua, Chow Chow, Dachshund, Dandie Dinmont Terrier, English Cocker Spaniel, English Toy Terrier, Finnish Spitz, Japan Chin, King Charles Spaniel, Old English Sheepdog, Newfoundland, Norwegian Buhund, Chinese Crested, Chinese Shar Pei, Shi Tzu, St Bernard, Swedish Lapphund, and Tibet Terrier.

To most of us, laws like this seem unreasonable but the majority of them evolved from perfectly laudable anti cruelty measures. That is not the issue. More importantly, enforcement does not guarantee results. Had this approach been effective, laws passed in Georgian England and Colonial America would have easily prevented the problems we are grappling with today.

Numerous publicly funded surveys and research studies have reconfirmed the well-known reasons why dogs are bred indiscriminately, surrendered to shelters, neglected or mistreated. This is no secret.

For instance, the AVMA recently surveyed 80,000 pet owners to determine why pets are surrendered to shelters. Most often, owners were unprepared to deal with the responsibilities of keeping a pet. They either lacked the physical ability, time, living space, or had unrealistic expectations of what it would entail. These are precisely the type of buyers that are screened and refused by responsible breeders. Therefore, this group would not have gotten a dog in the first place unless they purchased it from a pet shop or mill. Next on the list was an owner’s inability to cope with training a puppy and/or socialzing it to other pets or humans in their home. Again, these issues are routinely addressed by breeders prior to placement. If a training problem does arise after placement, breeders provide technical support until it is resolved. Expensive or crippling health problems also led to a fair proportion of shelter surrenders. Needless to say, these issues are far less likely to occur in well bred dogs and breeders are prepared to manage them if they do. Hobby breeders may not be the source of pet overpopulation, and they certainly do their share to prevent and manage ir through a combination of personal responsibility, public education, volunteer rescue programs and health testing of breeding stock. They are also the easiest group to successfully target with anti-dog laws ordinances.

Ostensibly anti-cruelty laws are directed towards controlling wide scale abuse like dog fighting rings and puppy mills. Those entities will easily survive the most overreaching legal restrictions as they have done consistently. Irresponsible individuals are no more likely to comply with dog restrictions than any of the other laws they customarily ignore.  Nor will restrictions have much impact on commercial dealers who have legal advisors to deal with red tape and accountants to deal with business related expenses. The only observance will come from pet owners and small scale hobby breeders without the wherewithal or financial means to comply. And this is exactly how things seem to be shaping up. Breeders are breeding less, showing less, and remaining in the sport for shorter periods of time.

The easiest way to implement a radical ideology is to slowly put small legislative pieces in place that will demonstrate short term results. Most people will simply forego owning pets or breeding dogs rather than pay exorbitant fees, tolerate intrusive inspections or risk legal action. They may love dogs but there is a limit to what the average person is willing to risk for this. They will not bankrupt their families, give up their jobs, or move even if it means surrendering their basic civil rights. Not only do they accept it as the lesser of two evils; media hype has convinced them that complying with onerous legal restrictions supports a greater ideological good.

The humane movement was founded in the Victorian era to combat rampant animal abuse through legal sanctions. This system operated with increasing success and alleviated much unnecessary suffering for a century. And it is hard to overcome a century’s worth of notions regarding a justified agenda. Within the last thirty years, the radical animal rights movement has utilized the world’s desire for humane treatment of animals to forward an agenda with very different goals.

I always noticed many similarities between today’s animal rights movement and the propaganda of 1930s Nazi Germany. I dismissed this as my personally negative perception of their ideas. But it seems that I was not so far off the mark. I recently learned that the AR movement has its roots in Nazi Germany and this regime was responsible for implementing some of the first laws in this context. We really don’t need to discuss their subsequent track record regarding human rights.

Since 9/11 the AR movement has made a concerted effort to recast its agenda as animal welfare rather than animal rights. But window dressing does not disguise their values or ideology. Proposed legislation, crafted and funded by these groups on the local and state level is designed to slowly chip away at the rights of pet owners (not breeders, but owners. And their actual target remains nearly oblivious to the threat at this stage of the game.)  Eventually it will become too expensive and legally burdensome for the average person to consider keeping pets. Most of these proposed laws are presented as a means to control dangerous dogs, prevent animal abuse, or restrict irresponsible breeding. Once implemented, they are easily repurposed. The evolution of the Jefferson County dangerous dog proposal was a perfect example of redirecting and broadening the original intent and scope of an anti dog law.

We may have won this battle but don’t make the mistake of seeing it more than that. This is “Life During Wartime” and we would be foolish to rest on our laurels or celebrate the defeat of AB 1634 as a hard won victory. Because when it comes down to it, this bill had nothing to do with “Healthy Pets” or controlling dangerous dogs. Its actual impetus can be credited to groups with far bigger fish to fry. 

Concurrent with the defeat of AB 1634 was the announcement of New Jersey’s AB 2649 which seeks to revise existing state regulations regarding animal cruelty. It is a perfect blend of AR pressure and clueless bureaucratic meddling. Among other things, touching a dog's "intimate parts" will be interpreted as "sexual contact" and aggravated animal abuse under the proposed new law. Every dog groomer, dog judge and dog breeder in the state would hence be liable for prosecution. Of course, if they decide to comply and refrain from touching any dog’s “intimate parts” this will leave them wide open to prosecution for things like animal neglect. This seems ridiculous but another of the bill’s proposed amendments is truly scary. Anyone will be able to lodge accusations of animal cruelty without incurring any risk of prosecution or retribution. Unfounded complaints, already common enough in the dog business, will skyrocket. Anyone who has not had this delightful experience is undoubtedly acquainted with someone who has been subjected the harassment triggered by anonymous complaints to local animal control authorities. This has become one of the most common “get even “tactics in many breed clubs. In my breed, the most notorious case involved a determined assassin who went so far as to place repeated anonymous complaints against a fellow breeder to Child Protective Services.

A few years ago, I heard a truly heartbreaking story of the outcome of this type of harassment. The target of the complaints was elderly and no longer an active breeder or exhibitor. She was however, quite active in her local Toy breed specialty club. As we all know, dog club politics often degenerate into low blows and dirty fighting. It was common knowledge in her club that she owned 13 dogs, way over her local limit. This was an assortment of geriatric retired champions, the remnants of her defunct breeding program. The dogs rarely ventured outdoors and her neighbors were unaware of them. Regardless of that, a dispute with another club member resulted in a visit from Animal Control.

She let him in; he counted her dogs, was unable to cite her for cruelty or neglect but informed her that she was way over her limit. She received a substantial fine, devastating for someone on a fixed income, and was informed of the time she had to place nine of them, face additional fines or surrender them to the municipal shelter. She was not financially or emotionally equipped to fight this. Nor could she appeal to her local club for help. Geriatric dogs, especially those with health problems, are never easy to place. Nor do they adapt well to new homes. She did the best thing for them and had all her dogs euthanized. Recounting this experience to me years later, it was obvious that she had never recovered from the trauma of the decision forced on her.

And what did it actually accomplish besides proving it’s possible to use a government agency to settle a personal vendetta?

Incidents like this might not sound like utopia to you, but according to the perceptions of many Americans, it is. We may have convinced the CA state legislature to rethink their plan for the moment. But that is nothing compared to revising nearly three decades of AR propaganda. I don’t know how many of you checked out general pet owner websites and blogs on July 12. Here are a few tidbits I came across.

“Dog breeders are running businesses and every other business has regulation to protect the public from unscrupulous practices. Why should breeding animals for profit be any different? AB1634 will go after irresponsible pet owners and breeders. It will stop a lot of under the table, unreported money they make. “

“I am sorry it didn’t pass; it makes a lot of sense to me. It is not necessary to produce dogs and cats when so many companion animals are euthanized/destroyed, murdered- what ever you call it. I wish PETA would stop using offensive words like euthanasia and pets.”

“I looked at the AKC website. That is nothing but propaganda to help breeders keep their hands on their blood money.”

I suspect that most of you are offended by these comments. Good. Perhaps it will motivate you to devote more attention to public relations and legislation.