California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger learned a valuable lesson last week: A guy who forever will be nicknamed "The Terminator" can't advocate speeding up the destruction of stray animals.

"Ahnold wants to kill puppies faster," was among the more charitable things said in reaction to the governor's support for cutting the grace period for holding stray pets in public shelters from six business days to three.

Closer to home, strays have a better deal. If found by animal control officers or good samaritans, they are taken to the Heartland Humane Society. Operated largely on private donations and proceeds from its thrift shop, Heartland has no maximum holding time as long as there is room. Every year, Heartland cares for 2,300 or so cats, dogs, rabbits, gerbils and other pets. Of those, an impressive 80 percent find new homes.

The average in California is more like 30 percent. The unlucky 70 percent represented about 600,000 dogs and cats and other animals that were humanely destroyed at California shelters last year — 34,000 in Los Angeles alone. It's the old supply and demand problem, made worse by the irresponsible pet owners who allow their animals to breed unchecked or abandon them.

Still, maybe mangy dogs and cats ranked too low on the budgeting radar when officials were crunching numbers, trying to balance California's $103 billion budget before the new fiscal year begins July 1.

Cutting three days would have saved the state $14 million by more quickly destroying these strays. A few people may have thought that was money well spent, but the outcry against the proposal was so loud and immediate that Friday, Schwarzenegger told the press "There was a mistake that I made ... Animals will be kept in animal shelters for six days, and so everything will stay exactly the same."

Except that Schwarzenegger learned a lesson that Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Cal State, Sacramento, already knew: "There is no organized constituency of dog and cat owners," she said, "but … cats and dogs are like mom and apple pie. Don't mess with the pets."

The attitude that animals are disposable life forms that exist only to feed, please or ferry humans is a view that is finding increasingly less favor. As humans draw farther from one another, they draw closer to their pets.

Shrewd leaders will keep that in mind.