On Feb. 28, partly to appease the uproar over the imminent arrival of Petland, the council passed a “pet trader” ordinance, which took effect March 10. The ordinance mandates a $50 “processing fee” for every unsterilized pet owned by “a person who exchanges for consideration” more than 15 dogs or cats, or both, in a year. The ordinance also requires disclosure of “any known disease, illness, or congenital or hereditary condition,” in an attempt to curb pet traders passing along unhealthy animals to unwitting consumers. City staff billed the pet trader ordinance as a “step in the right direction,” while activists called it a “baby step,” but a good step, nonetheless.

The closest Austin has ever come to getting a spay/neuter ordinance was in 2005, when activists and the Animal Advis­ory Commission drafted the “Austin Save a Pet” ordinance, emphatically dubbed, “A.S.A.P.” But the draft never made it to the council dais. According to former AAC member Cathy Olive, national dog breeders bombarded council with anti-ordinance e-mails, reportedly complaining that Austin’s ordinance would ruin business and even threatening to boycott dog shows in Austin. But as Olive noted, show dogs would have been exempt. In the end, Olive said, Pulliam “said she wouldn’t support the ordinance. It broke my heart. There has to be a change in administration, or she needs to have an epiphany.” A popular theory for the ordinance’s failure, Olive went on, was that Mayor Pro Tem Betty Dunkerley “talked everybody out of” supporting the ordinance. But current AAC Chair Carol Adams says council members never supported it in the first place.

Pulliam, for her part, said the 2005 ordinance lacked support because it was “poorly worded.” As for her critics in the animal-rights community, Pulliam said she doesn’t wield as much authority as some people may think. “I implement policy,” she said. “I don’t set it.” Pulliam’s current pet projects include working with the Austin Police Department to curb the practice of drug dealers using pit bulls as guard dogs, a program better received than her aim to provide MP3 players to pet owners in high-poverty neighborhoods as incentives to sterilize their pets voluntarily. On the latter, some regard the incentive effort as a somewhat narrow-minded way of blaming pet euthanasia rates on East Austin poverty.

Melanie Sobel, former director of the Williamson Co. Regional Animal Shelter, posits that Austin’s political fear of a spay/neuter ordinance may have grown out of the Texas spirit of “people [wanting] their ‘God-given right’ to do what they want with their property. I always tell people who want to breed their animal or buy one from a pet store, if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem.”