Thursday, May 10, 2012

(Blog Stage 8 Commentary) Fixing the Problem

I agree with Christine. I think that if the state were to require us to spay and neuter our pets it would decrease the number of homeless pets considerably. This would put less of a burden on the city to need to care for them through animal shelters. I see another benefit as well, it would take the free pets off the market and pretty much require people to purchase pets and pay for them to be fixed. This is more of an investment than just grabbing a cute kitty from the side of the road where someone has a box of free kittens to give away. If people have to pay to get pets and pay for fixing them, I think that less people would haphazardly choose to own animals, thus less chance of abandoned animals. Overall, this sounds like it would be a great measure for the legislature to pass.

On the other hand, I can see it backfiring in one big way. This type of legislation would need to be enforced. Someone would have to check and see if animals have been spayed or neutered. This creates a huge problem because instead of spending extra money on animal shelters, we now must spend it on checking with citizens to ensure they are getting their pets fixed. The only way I working out is with more legislation stating that the people issued licenses to breed, must keep track of every pet they adopt out and make sure those pets are spayed or neutered either before they adopt them out or that the new owner does it. All of that said, even with that one flaw, I still feel this would be a worthy cause and it would be interesting to look into it further.