Revisiting the Mandatory Spay and Neuter Watchdog Series

sheltered dog

Last week, we ran a three-part Watchdog series entitled Debating Spay and Neuter.” Although we didn’t know the final outcome in running this story, which was originally published by our partner DogTime.com, we anticipated that it would become a hot topic that would spark an interesting conversation amongst the canine community. The series received a lot of critical feedback from both pro and con sides alike. Some of the comments we’ve received include the following:

“There must be some blurring going on. I am for a fiscally resonsible State and Local government. LA City has spoken. It is my hope that as a State we can move on toward a more fiscially responsible and humane solution to this problem. 1634 appears to be the way.” – Dr. Mark Garrison

“Want to spent the states money on a good program? Start with POSITIVE NOT PUNATIVE measures FIRST.. FREE SPAY NEUTER.. WHY NOT TRY IT FOR A YEAR OR TWO.. see if it makes a difference.” – porkchop

“As mandatory spaying and neutering continues to sprout up in communities, it shall continue to be successful. It will end the suffering for many animals, and there will always be enough dogs and cats for people to love!” – Judy

“Education is good but it is NOT the answer and anyone who thinks it is doesn’t do rescue work or work in a shelter. Please don’t tell me that people don’t dump their pets at the shelter!” – Barbara

Among the more than two dozen comments we received for that series alone (we just launched this site about a month ago), two visitors, Carol and Diane, also pointed out a possible factual error in Part 3. DogTime.com did not edit and/or publish a retraction/correction for the stating that Santa Barbara County passed a similar ordinance to AB 1634, so this has not been verified as of yet, but we certainly welcome all feedback.

Since “mandatory spay and neuter” is tossed around as much as “super delegate” in the news realm this year, we’ve decided to bring this discussion into overdrive by designating it our anchor Hot Topic within our canine forums. We’re doing this for two main reasons: 1) As part of simplifying the discussion process, it’s just easier to navigate one thread in a forum than it is to navigate around three different Watchdog posts/comments, and 2) this is an extremely lively topic that will continue to be a sore subject for many dog loves, especially during this election year, so we’d like to keep this topic fresh while we’ll still report on other newsy tidbits. That said, we’d like to welcome you to share your thoughts in our Debating Spay and Neuter Forum.

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