We spend a lot of time on this show talking about problems that need to be fixed. This episode does the opposite. It’s a roundup of recent wins for animals, most of them from this year, on the issues we come back to again and again, and most of them happening at the city and county level where your voice carries the most weight.
From a statewide pet store ban in Colorado to a spay and neuter program brought back from the dead by the residents of Fort Smith, Arkansas, to the first time New York City ever put animal welfare in its budget, these are the victories that don’t always make the news but should. Every one of them started with advocates who looked at a problem everyone treated as permanent and decided it wasn’t. The point isn’t just to celebrate. It’s to hand you an idea you could bring home to your town.
The episode moves from breeder regulation to spay and neuter funding to access to veterinary care to a national milestone in animal cruelty law, with stops in Colorado, Arkansas, New York, Nevada, Texas, and Iowa. Some of these wins came fast. Most came after years of advocates showing up. All of them are things you could point to when someone asks whether local advocacy is worth the effort.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why local ordinances are often an effective path to a statewide law, using Colorado’s pet store ban as the model
- How the people of one Arkansas city reversed a budget cut to their spay and neuter program, and what that says about the need to defend the wins you already have
- How Texas made its first major investment in spay and neuter by framing it as public health and taxpayer savings, and why the application window closed early when demand far exceeded the funding
- Why New York City putting animal welfare in its budget for the first time is an example other cities will notice
- What persistence looks like in practice, from a pet store ban that came back years after an earlier version was repealed
Key Takeaway
Almost none of these wins happened because a lawmaker woke up with the idea. They happened because constituents kept showing up, sometimes for years, and that means the next one could start with you.
Episode Highlights
00:00 — Why focusing on wins matters in animal advocacy
01:11 — Every successful campaign starts with someone like you
02:23 — Colorado’s statewide ban on pet store sales of dogs and cats
03:58 — Fort Smith residents restore spay/neuter voucher funding
05:26 — New York City’s first-ever dedicated animal welfare funding
06:44 — Las Vegas bans retail sales of multiple species after years of effort
07:48 — Colorado streamlines vet licensing and creates a pet medication donation program
09:07 — Texas allocates $13 million for spay/neuter and vaccination
10:11 — A flood of applications reveals huge statewide demand in Texas
10:51 — Iowa becomes the 50th state to make animal torture a felony
12:23 — Be the Change: bringing these wins home and protecting the ones already won
13:01 — Why legislative wins are driven by you, not by politicians alone
Resources Mentioned:
The Four C’s of Legislative Advocacy for Animals
Related Episodes:
The Pet Care Access Crisis That Telehealth Could Help Solve: A Veterinarian’s View
(On increasing access to veterinary care)
Why Animal Advocates Need a 501(c)(4): Allie Taylor of Voters for Animal Rights
(On New York City’s budget for spay/neuter)
Transcript
Welcome back to the Animal Advocate. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about problems that need to be fixed. Today I want to do something different and spend the episode celebrating the hard fought wins of animal advocates, recent ones, most of them from this year. On the issues we come back to again and again on this show. I’ve already shared our victory in Philadelphia, passing a moratorium on unlicensed breeding of dogs, and I’m hopeful I’ll be able to share another one banning horse drawn carriages very soon. All of us who do this work live immersed in challenges that feel beyond our control to fix. So today is the time to sit back, sip your beverage and appreciate that advocates everywhere are notching victories that will relieve some animal suffering and let those victories inspire you when the road looks long and the hill goes straight up.
Welcome to the Animal Advocate where we arm animal lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become effective advocates. I’m your host Penny Ellison, and I’ve taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. If you’ve ever thought someone should do something about that, I’m here to guide you on your journey to being that someone. You can find us on the web at animaladvocacyacademy.com and that’s where you’ll find show notes and resources and you can send us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you’d like to hear on future shows. So onto today’s topic.
I really want to make this a regular feature of the show because we need to spend at least a few episodes a year on what’s going well. Every one of these bills and the people that pushed them started exactly where you are. Somebody looked at a problem everyone treated as unchangeable and decided it wasn’t. So as you listen, I don’t want you thinking, oh, just “good for them.” I want you listening for the one idea that you could bring home the ordinance that would work in your town. The funding fight worth picking. Most of these aren’t complicated. They’re just things somebody decided to try. So let’s get into them.
First up, Colorado. Colorado banned pet store sales of dogs and cats statewide. That is something that has been pending in Pennsylvania for some time and we haven’t been able to get it across the finish line. But on April 29th of this year, Governor Polis signed House Bill 24-1102, which prohibits pet stores in Colorado from selling, leasing or transferring ownership of a dog or cat. The ban takes effect in 2027. Stores can still provide the space to display animals available for adoption through a licensed shelter or rescue, as long as they don’t collect a fee for it and the animals are all spayed or neutered. What I find most useful about this one is the path it took. More than two dozen Colorado cities had already passed their own pet store ordinances before the state acted. That’s a pattern we see again and again, local ordinances building the momentum and proving the policy works and the state eventually catches up. If you’ve ever wondered whether a city ordinance is worth the effort when what you really want is a state law, Colorado is your answer. The cities came first, and they made the state law possible.
Number two in our list of victories: Fort Smith, Arkansas brought back its spay and neuter program after constituents pushed back. Now here’s one that almost nobody outside Arkansas heard about, and it’s my favorite kind of story. Fort Smith created a spay and neuter voucher program by ordinance in 2024. In its first year, they fixed more than 2,300 animals and and in 2025 it fixed over 2,500 more before the funding was cut in a round of budget reductions in August. And then the residents of Fort Smith showed up. They asked their board to reconsider and on February 17th of this year, the board voted unanimously to restore $150,000 to bring the program back. The vouchers go to residents who meet income requirements and can be redeemed at participating clinics. I love this one because it’s a reminder that advocacy isn’t only about passing something new. Sometimes it’s about protecting what you already won and showing up when it’s threatened. The people who called and emailed their board members are the reason that that program exists. Again.
Our third animal victory is from New York City. New York City funded animal welfare in its budget for the first time ever. Remember, cities don’t need for the most part to fund anything with animal welfare. But in its fiscal year 2026 budget, the New York City Council allocated $500,000 to expand low and no cost spay and neuter services, enough to fund about 3,500 surgeries delivered through the group Flatbush Cats. Now if you listened to my interview with Allie Taylor of Voters for Animal Rights, you might remember her talking about this because they fought for this allocation and it covers both trap neuter return programs and services for low income pet owners. What makes this great is isn’t just the dollar figure. It’s that this is the first time the New York City Council has ever funded an initiative dedicated to animals. One of the council members behind it framed it exactly the way I would as a recognition that animal welfare is a public health issue. When the largest city in the country decides for the first time that this belongs in the budget, that’s a marker other cities will notice next.
Victory number four. Las Vegas also banned pet store sales of dogs and cats. So we’re back to breeder regulation for a moment and at the local level. So in November, the Las Vegas city council voted 5 to 2 to ban the retail sale of dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs and pot bellied pigs in pet shops. New pet shops are barred right away and the existing licensed shops have until late 2028 to phase out. They can still partner with shelters and rescues for adoption events. And I included this one partly because Las Vegas tried a similar ban all the way back in 2017 and repealed it a year later. But advocates didn’t quit. Years later, they got it done, this time with a phase in period built in so existing businesses had a runway to adjust. That willingness to compromise on timing without giving up on the goal is often what gets these things across the finish line.
Victory number five. Again, back to Colorado — must have a great group of advocates there — because Colorado also passed a law to expand access to veterinary care. The same day the governor signed the pet store ban, he signed House Bill 26:1198, the access to veterinary care bill. It does two things I want to highlight. First, it speeds up the process for a veterinarian already licensed in another state to get licensed in Colorado, which is one of the practical ways you can address veterinary shortages and veterinary deserts. Second, it creates a program for donating unused prescription pet medications so they can go to a veterinary practice or a shelter instead of what they’re doing now, which is throwing them away. For listeners who heard my conversation with Dr. Lauren Hughes (I’ll link to it in the show notes), we talked about the cost of care and the families who can’t reach a vet. And this is the kind of unglamorous, practical kind of fix that actually moves access in the right direction.
Victory number six. Texas made its first major investment in spay and neuter. This one surprised a lot of people because, you know, Texas, and that’s part of why I wanted to include it. Texas just put real state money behind spay and neuter for the first time in the last legislative session. Lawmakers wrote $13 million into the state budget over two years to launch a spay, neuter and vaccination pilot program and the money started going out the door this year. What I find smart about how they got it done is the framing. This didn’t pass as a sentimental animal welfare bill. It passed as a public health and fiscal responsibility bill because fewer unplanned litters means fewer strays, lower shelter intake, and lower costs for animal control and, of course, taxpayers down the line. The grants will go to shelters, rescues, nonprofits, and veterinary clinics in all 254 counties with a tiered structure designed to reach rural and underserved areas, not just the big cities. And this is the part that tells you everything about the need. The state opened applications in January of this year, and they were so swamped that they had to close the window a month later because demand far exceeded the available funding. When a program gets buried in applications that fast, that’s not a program looking for a problem. That’s funding finally meeting a need that was there all along. If you’ve ever been told that spay and neuter funding is a hard sell in your state, Texas just showed there’s a way to make the case that crosses the usual political lines.
And finally, victory number seven. Iowa became the 50th state to make animal torture a felony. I’m closing with this milestone, even though it’s from last year, because I think it’s important. In May of last year, Governor Kim Reynolds signed House Bill 2348, making Iowa the 50th and final state to make the intentional torture of a companion animal a felony on the first offense. To me, the bigger story isn’t just that Iowa finally caught up. It’s that the documented link between animal cruelty and human violence is now reflected in the law of every single state in the country. Advocates in Iowa had been working on this since the 1990s, so it took roughly 30 years. If you ever need a reminder that this work is slow, but it does move, this is it.
So that’s the roundup for today. Wins at the state and city level across all the issues we cover all the time. Spay, neuter funding, breeder regulation, access to veterinary care, and animal cruelty. We talk about these issues all the time. And now you can see real laws and ordinances to show for all the efforts that these advocates have put into it.
Well, today’s be the change segment should be pretty obvious. Pick the win on this list that’s closest to an issue you care about. Then go look up whether your city or state has something similar on the books or anything pending. If it’s already there, find out whether it’s still funded and still being enforced because, as Fort Smith reminds us, what you stop defending can disappear. If your community doesn’t have a version of it, that’s your project. And you can reach out to the advocacy organizations that worked on these similar measures in other places and get their advice.
Almost none of these passed because a lawmaker woke up with the idea. They passed because constituents kept showing up, sometimes for years. Good luck and we’re here to help.
That’s it for today. The Animal Advocate is brought to you by the Animal Advocacy Academy. If today’s episode got you thinking about what you can do to change things for animals, I want to make sure you know about the four Cs of legislative advocacy for animals. It’s a free audio series I put together that gives you a real framework for making legislation happen. You can find it at animaladvocacyacademy.com/fourcs. and you can find all our episodes and show notes at animal advocacyacademy.com. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and if you know another animal advocate who should be listening, send this one their way. Questions on today’s topic or anything else, just email us at podcast@animaladvocacyacademy.com we’ll write back, or we’ll feature your question in a future episode.
Remember, compassion is great, but compassionate action is infinitely better. Until next week, Live with Compassion.
