TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

The original idea for writing this dog advice column was based on one distinct goal: to prevent dogs from being surrendered to animal shelters for common behavior problems.

Helping people to understand why their dogs behave as they do, and their responsibilities as dog owners, has been effective in saving many dogs from being condemned to a lifetime of isolation in backyards, imminent re-homing, or worse.

The owners I consult and work with truly do care about animals.

They vaccinate their dogs, spay and neuter them, and don't allow their dogs to become a neighborhood nuisance.

They license, leash and pick up after their dogs.

Most of them volunteer and/or contribute to shelters and animal-welfare organizations,

They will stop, without fail, to rescue a stray or lost dog and attempt to find its owner.

And, at least 50 percent of the dogs I train are rescues or shelter adoptions.

After reading Stacey Augustson's angry and frustrated Aug. 16 letter to the editor, "Let's all do our part to dismantle Kern's Animal Cruelty Hall of Shame," I reflected on the fact that while I agree with much, if not all, of what she said, the chances of "shaming" people into treating animals more humanely is unlikely.

As for the people who beat, starve and hog-tie dogs, they are sociopaths who don't possess emotions like guilt, empathy or shame.

And do we really believe that sentencing them to clean kennels will "make them think twice before committing future crimes?"

That the experience will dissuade them from becoming repeat offenders?

Me? Not so much.

I also believe that we would continue to have a pet overpopulation problem even if Bakersfield were to provide low or no-cost spay and neutering.

Why?

Because there is a large part of the dog-owning population here in Bakersfield that has no intention of altering its pets. (And I'm not talking about the small demographic of dog show people here who must keep their dogs intact in order to compete and/or perpetuate a bloodline.)

I am speaking of the "breeders" who are cranking out puppies, litter after litter, because they have found that it is a very lucrative way to supplement their incomes.

They follow the trends in popular or fad breeds, invest in a couple of "starter" dogs, and charge obscene prices for the puppies they produce.

Once they have sold a few litters and grow out a couple of the pups to breeding age, they are ready to double their profits.

If they breed two or more females twice a year, well, you do the math.

They do not care about health clearances, maintaining the integrity of the breed or what happens to a dog after it is sold.

They call themselves breeders, but they are just small-scale puppy mills, and they might be living right next door to you.

We keep saying adopt, volunteer and contribute more to take care of and house these thousands and thousands of dogs; we even transport truckloads of them out of town to other cities, but the numbers don't go down.

A week ago I went through the dog ads in the classified section.

Only one ad had a breeder's permit listed.

So are we to believe that the other hundreds of puppies advertised for sale are all city litters which are not required to obtain permits?

The Animal Control Commission is to be commended for spending countless hours hammering out a breeding license plan.

But with a lack of manpower to enforce it, it becomes ineffective to curtail the breeding of puppies for profit.

Until there are more animal control officers hired, trained, compiling the records, and out on the streets going door to door, we are not going to make a dent in this problem.

We need leaders in our local government who are not only willing to admit that this is a problem that has been swept under the rug long enough, but also tell us what they're going to do about it.

Of course, it will cost money to hire and train more people.

But would you rather see money spent to stop the mass production of puppies for profit and enforcement of licensing and leashing regulations, or continue to send your dog-loving dollars into the money pit with the thousands of dogs on death row?

In order to reduce the number of dogs destroyed each year in our shelters, we must first "cut off the head of the snake."

-- Sherry Davis is a dog trainer/owner of CSI 4 K9s. E-mail her at doglady@ bakersfield.com. These are her opinions and not necessarily those of The Californian.