JULY 17TH ANNIVERSARIES: A “DARLING PUPPY” AND A CORPORATION

July 17th has long been an anniversary of things I stop to ponder.  July 17, 1967 was the long awaited day my Rottweiler puppy arrived from Rodsden in a 70 pound crate on a UAL flight from O’Hare to SFO.  It was the “Summer of Love” in San Francisco, and it seemed there could be worse things for a girl to do than choose a new breed and start a new puppy.  I suppose…but the difficult dogs are the ones we learn from, and these years were formative years in ways I never imagined.

July 17, 1991 was the incorporation date of The Animal Council. It was 9 months into the San Mateo County moratorium on breeding ordinance, and it seemed a formal organization would be a ticket into our longer term and credible participation in public policy.  Had we known that 16 years later after year in and year out work, we would have found ourselves in the midst of AB 1634, we might have thought longer about former band singer Grace Slick’s telling us to get a new hobby.  We didn’t, because this is a life, not a hobby.  All the dogs and people over the past 40 years have been part of a greater community of meaning for us all — something legislator Lloyd Levine could not understand when he complained that we think an attack on one of us is an attack on all.  

This is what I pause to remember on July 17. 

Sharon A. Coleman, President, The Animal Council

CALIFORNIA COUNCIL OF COMPANION ANIMAL ADVOCATES – LEST WE FORGET

The California Council of Companion Animal Advocates (CCCAA) or “3c2a” suggesting a mysterious chemical compound, which it may well have been, was a creation of the California Veterinary Medical Association that ambitiously included a diverse range of animal groups with the slogan, “Different Voices – One Goal”.  That goal was to study and eliminate “overpopulation” of dogs and cats, and the year was 1991.  We were never a named member, because our Board Member, Alice Partanen, had to make a quick decision at the first meeting whether to formally represent us or our sister organization, the National Pet Alliance.  Throughout the existence of CCCAA, NPA remained a formal member and participant along with all the big national names that sent representatives to quarterly meetings throughout the 1990s with the exception of The American Kennel Club which withdrew along the way.  CCCAA held 6 “POP” symposia over the years that began with great promise of addressing “overpopulation” but gradually shifted to related but more general topics — perhaps because “overpopulation” was being fairly well understood and controlled.  A final legacy was the roll of stickers, still intact in our label drawer, pictured with this entry.  The sticker was an ominous sign of CVMA’s drifting away from its committment to an inclusive, problem solving forum to its recent exclusionary relationships with animal control and humane organizations.  With renewed interest in “problem solving” and “working” with supporters of this year’s AB 1634, we have gathered archival material from our CCCAA files and included it on our web site, lest we forget and late comers never know what has gone before us.  

PETPAC RALLY AT CA CAPITOL, JULY 11, 2007

Following the California Senate Committee on Local Government hearing at dawn on a rare, cool overcast morning in Sacramento, California on Wednesday, July 11, when the infamous California Healthy Pets Act (AB 1634) slipped into the legslative version of coma of uncertain prognosis, hundreds of opponents gathered on the west steps for a celebratory Rally sponsored by PetPac and a chance to greet many old friends and put new faces with familiar names known only online.  The crowd stretched out the wide walkway toward 10th Street where the TV news trucks were parked, up the west stairs to the doors into the Capitol and out the walkways in both directions to the sides with TV cameras lined up in front of the crowd.  In addition to State Senator George Runner and key opposition leadership, the “star” speaker was the adult Jon Provost, known best as the child actor who played “Timmy” in the “Lassie” TV series, along with the 9th generation “Lassie” — an unregistered Collie dog actually named “Laddie” and his owner/trainer, Bob Weatherwax.  Legislators had enjoyed photos with the lobbying “Lassie” who brought reality to the irreparable flaws in the bill.