California Bill Would Require Neutered Pets

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MICHELE NORRIS, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

For years, the now-retired game show host, Bob Barker, signed off his show, "The Price Is Right," with an exhortation to his viewers to do right.

(Soundbite of TV program, "The Price Is Right")

Mr. BOB BARKER (Host): Bob Barker, reminding you on how to control the pet population - have your pets spayed or neutered. Good-bye, everybody.

SIEGEL: Well, Barker lend his enthusiasm for that cause to the California Healthy Pets Act, a bill that passed the state Assembly in Sacramento last week. Barker and the singer Lionel Richie lobbied for the bill, which requires pet owners to spay and neuter their cats and dogs.

John Myers covers the statehouse from member station KQED, and joins us. Welcome to the program.

JOHN MYERS: Thank you very much.

SIEGEL: What exactly would the bill do?

MYERS: Well, in a nutshell, the legislation would require most cats and dogs in California to be spayed or neutered. As it's currently drafted - and I say currently, because it could still be modified as it keeps moving forward here in Sacramento - the legislation requires most pets older than four months old to be spayed or neutered, and has some exemptions from this mandatory sterilization for certain pets and certain pet owners if they get permits from their local officials. But still, I think a bit of a work in progress as it moves forward.

SIEGEL: And the concern here is to cut down on a number of strays or euthanized in California?

MYERS: Exactly. About a million pets are born into California every year without homes. And the animal shelters in California, the estimates are - costs local government about $250 million dollars a year to run. The supporters say if you implement these new rules, you're going to save taxpayers a lot of money. In fact, they said a dollar in sterilization surgery cost will save taxpayers almost $19 over a 10-year period.

So there's a fiscal component to it, but I think there's also this responsibility component as well.

SIEGEL: Now, the bill only passed the Assembly by three votes, so I assume there were some pretty vocal arguments against it as well that were heard.

MYERS: If you've ever seen a squabble at a dog park like I have when I've taken my dog to one. You have some sense of what it was like on the floor of the California State Assembly. It was a long, passionate debate. Clearly, there's some people who think the exemptions don't go far enough. There's some people who just say government should be interfering in this.

But it took a lot. And as you refer to at the beginning, Bob Barker got on the phone after he taped his last show of "The Price Is Right" and started making phone calls up here at the Sacramento and trying to twist some arms and do some last-minute lobbying, and got just the bare majority to move the bill forward.

SIEGEL: Let's talk about the exemptions here. I gather that if you - one of them, is if you were a breeder of purebred dogs, you could get a license to have an exemption.

MYERS: That's correct. You can get a license if you're a licensed breeder. If you have competition pets - usually competition dogs, I think, we're thinking of - or working dogs for law enforcement, or working dogs for the disabled, including guide dogs for the blind.

But interestingly enough, some of the opposition to this bill said why are you protecting purebred dogs? What about mixed breed dogs that are good and do all these wonderful things? And so the exemptions, I think, were quite contentious and I think that's where the author, who is a Democratic assemblyman from Los Angeles area named Lloyd Levine, is going to have to keep working on these things to get it to move forward here in the legislature.

SIEGEL: Yes. I've read that Governor Schwarzenegger owns a yellow Lab and a Cockapoo. And I guess, under the terms of the bill, he could get a license to breed the Lab but not the Cockapoo, which is by definition, not a purebred dog?

MYERS: Yeah. It's somewhat interesting there. Also, what's interesting last when we asked the governor's office what the status of these dogs were, so to speak, and the governor's folks came back to say, you know, in honor of their, quote, "private lives" of the gubernatorial pooches, they didn't want to comment on whether they had been neutered, which led a lot of people to believe that they weren't.

But I should say that the governor's own experience with pets has influenced his thinking before in whether or not he makes actions. Because about three years ago, he was going to trim state spending by shortening the time that pets can be kept in shelters before they're euthanized, and his daughter stepped in and said, what are you doing? And he changed his mind.

SIEGEL: Yeah. I mean, one adverse reading of this bill, I guess, is it is outlawing the homebred litter of mutts?

MYERS: In some ways, it could be. And so I think one of the amendments that may be considered here in the coming weeks is to allow, perhaps, one litter every so often. I mean, it was modeled after a local ordinance in the seaside city of Santa Cruz, California. And the supporters there say, well, you know, it's not like we have a shortage of pets in Santa Cruz after this. So there are ways it can work.

And I think it will be interesting to see how it moves forward. Some of it, kind of a symbolic message here and some of it, people really concerned, you know, pets are members of the family.

SIEGEL: Well, John Myers, thanks a lot for talking with us about it.

MYERS: Thank you.

SIEGEL: That's John Myers, who covers the California statehouse from member station KQED in San Francisco.

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