The president of the local For Pet’s Sake/ Humane Society is urging area residents to support a bill currently in the state Legislature that would encourage the spaying and neutering of pets in Colorado.

"We want to help get rid of that old-time mentality that a dog isn’t a good dog unless it has a litter," said Pat Devitt.

HB 00-1364 has been passed by the House and is set to come before three committees in the Senate, but has not been scheduled for hearings yet, a spokesperson at the Legislature’s Bill Room said Tuesday.

The bill would create a special license plate promoting the control of pet overpopulation.

"There’s a lot of special license plates in the state," said the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Jennifer Veiga (D-Denver), on Tuesday. "The purpose is to allocate a source of funding to combat pet overpopulation."

A portion of the original bill that would have required a $50 deposit for the adoption of an unneutered animal, refundable when the animal was neutered, was deleted, she said.

Both nationwide and throughout the state, pet population control is a serious issue. In 1998, 33,110 pets were known to have been put to death in the state, the bill notes, and another 10,000 were probably destroyed at agencies that did not report the deaths.

In Montezuma County, approximately 535 dogs and cats were put to death last year at the local shelter, Devitt said.

The bill would provide for the creation of the new license plates if an animal shelter first submitted 500 signatures of persons who want to buy the plate.

"If the shelters get together and have demand for more than 500, the plates would be created," Veiga said. "The profits would go into a pet-overpopulation fund to offset the cost of spay-neuter programs and do public education."