This Thursday, April 9, the public safety committee (made up of supervisors Matt Dorsey, Alan Wong, and Bilal Mahmood) will hear a proposed ordinance amending the Health Code to require that every dog in San Francisco, with certain exceptions, be sterilized (along with licensed, vaccinated, microchipped, and leashed in public areas). Right now, sterilization laws are only enforced only for pit bulls. As a longtime advocate (and pit bull mom), I fought for the legislation years ago when around 98 percent of dogs at our city shelter Animal Care and Control (ACC) were pit bulls and most were being euthanized. After it was enacted, euthanasia rates fell dramatically from around 98 percent to 14 percent. Now, because of Pandemic Puppy Mania and the homeless who breed and sell puppies on the streets for drugs, the city shelter is in crisis. Between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, ACC killed 550 dogs.
I asked Voice contributor Amber Richmond to write a column on what she experienced living as a drug addict on the streets with her dog, Duchess, some of which may sound shocking but isn’t uncommon. For example, female dogs don’t like to be bred, so the female is held while the male rapes her. For dogfighting rings (where many of the puppies bred on the streets wind up), owners use a “rape stand,” where the female is strapped in and unable to escape while the male mounts her. Because they bring in so much money, French bulldogs are showing up on the streets, many of them stolen. The majority of females, however, can’t have natural birth and require a cesarian or “C” section, otherwise the female and/or her puppies often die. “Frenchies” are showing up in shelters at an alarming rate, some carrying their dead puppies inside of their tiny bodies, and most with other horrific breed-specific health issues. Some don’t make it out of shelters, either euthanized for their health or for lack of space. Local rescue groups like gobeyondrescue.org wonderdogrescue.org, and californiabullyrescue.org have dozens of them, from puppies to adults, available for adoption.
I could write a book on the many reasons all dogs in the country (and in the world) should be sterilized, vaccinated, given regular veterinary care, and microchipped (a chip the size of a grain of rice that is implanted in your pet with contact information so if they are lost or stolen, they can be scanned and returned to you). The main reason for sterilization is a simple one — there are too many dogs and not enough homes. The statistics are daunting: Nearly 400,000 dogs were killed, mostly for lack of space, in the United States last year alone. (I’ll go into cats in an upcoming article, which are killed at a rate of 2 to 1 compared to dogs.)…