The issue of pound seizure stirred passionate debate for months before the November election. In the end, voters decided, by a huge margin, that the county Department of Animal Control should continue to sell animals "which will die anyway" to UC San Diego for research purposes.

With the constant refrain of "they will die anyway" in my ears, I waited for anyone on either side to question why these animals had to die. But no one asked what crime they had committed or even why they'd ended up in public shelters. No one bothered to wonder why 25,000 dogs and cats, puppies and kittens leave county pounds as corpses every year.

As one who has held the dying and injected the lethal dose, I refuse to accept their deaths, and I'm not alone. Across the country, people are finally acting to stop the killing.

Those numbing numbers do not need to be an unavoidable fact of life.

Kim Sturla, the director of the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo County, tried for years to educate the public with the statistics: Of the 16,000 animals entering that shelter every year, 3,000 are claimed and 3,000 placed in adoptive homes. The rest, all 10,000 of them, are killed and their bodies tossed in barrels.

But Sturla has changed her tactics. In October, the San Mateo Humane Society placed inserts in 178,000 Bay Area newspapers and treated readers to the sight of some of those barrels of bodies. She then invited members of the media to witness the execution of four kittens, a cat and three dogs.

The Humane Society also convinced a county supervisor to introduce an ordinance that would ban breeding until the county achieves "zero pet overpopulation." Despite jeering denouncement from local breeders and pressure from the powerful pet industry, including the American Kennel Club, other supervisors have pledged to support the legislation.

Other counties, including Santa Cruz, are considering similar legislation. Santa Cruz already has a law requiring that any dog impounded more than once be altered.

In a number of communities, animal control agencies have opened their own low-cost spay/neuter clinics despite initial vocal opposition from veterinarians. The Los Angeles Department of Animal Regulation led the way and now operates four clinics, which charge $20 or less for surgical sterilization as well as vaccinations.

In Palo Alto, Animal Services impounded 10,000 dogs and cats when its clinic first opened. Last year only 3,200 animals passed through the shelter doors, and the body count dropped accordingly.