Judie Mancuso

Laguna Beach animal welfare advocate Judie Mancuso spent a year and a half trying to get the state Legislature to pass a law requiring that pets be sterilized. A week ago, the bill, AB 1634 -- alternately reviled and cheered -- was finally rejected in the state Senate.

On the tortured road to its death, the bill was amended almost a dozen times, watered down and even name-changed. Breeders and opposition groups howled in protest and said legislators were taking away their rights to handle their animals as they saw fit.

Mancuso, whose voice sounds as though it belongs to a plucky girl cartoon character, had created the original proposal along with Los Angeles city staffers and L.A. Animal Services general manager Ed Boks. Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys) became the bill's author and legislative torchbearer.

The goal was to stem the euthanasia of hundreds of thousands of animals in the state's shelters annually by mandating people alter their pets. Fewer animals being born meant fewer strays and owner-surrendered pets being housed in the shelters, Mancuso and company contended. "You're just trying to prevent animals coming in the front door," said Mancuso, pictured here smooching a pooch in the Central Valley SPCA shelter in Fresno.

Despite passing the Assembly last year, the beleaguered bill never had an easy road. Sterilization exemptions for many dogs and cats in the original bill (show dogs, service dogs, etc.) still didn't please opponents. The service dog pictured below that showed up last year in Sacramento with its owner to protest the original bill was actually never in any danger of being altered.

The final version of the bill required sterilization only of pets that were cited for being unlicensed, running loose or impounded, and they had to be guilty of those violations several times.

But Mancuso says the real problem was the backstage battling between some senators and bill author Levine. Some senators were against any bill from the get-go. (One Democratic senator told Mancuso's people working the Senate that there were folks in his district who ate dogs -- and not to count on his vote.)

Levine says it costs the state $300 million a year to shelter and euthanize animals. "I'm disappointed the Senate didn't deal with this," Levine said. "Just because breeders say there isn't a problem out there doesn't mean it's not there."

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Note: This is the person who [some on] dogbehaviorscience is fighting on bill SB250.