LA Animal Shelter "lacks well developed strategy" for MSN

In an audit released yesterday of the LA Animal Control Division, the city controller had some pretty harsh things to say about Ed Boks' animal control division and their eminent implementation of their mandatory spay/neuter ordinance.  Among the findings:

The Department lacks a well-developed strategy for carrying out the spay/neuter program.

The Department does not evaluate the effectiveness of the spay/neuter program and processes to assess the adequacy of the resources allocated to these activities.

The Department's data management system is ineffiicient and does not accurately report program results.

The department does not ensure spay/neuter resources are maximized.

The department is not prepared to advertise and enforce the new ordinance.

The department has not gotten enough local veterinarians and non-profits involved to increase spay/neuter services.

This lack of education could be a big reason why the city has seen a 32% increase in dog euthanasias in 2008 over 2007 -- after at least five years of constant decline in euthanasia and decreasing shelter euthanasia during that time by 67%.

LA Animal Watch has the link to the entire audit...well worth the read.

Comments

[Becky]

If this is the same shelter that Winograd refers to on his blog, there is a lot of appalling info on it. Lots of filth, neglect, abuse and killing.

[s kennedy]

hey, i could have told them that without even going there. I feel for Boks, but fact is that no one can turn LA around quickly. It takes time, effort, and a lot of volunteers. They would probably need maybe 2,000-3,000 volunteers. They need the marketing in english and spanish and the mobile trucks in the neighborhoods every week, the signs in eng/spanish posted everywhere, like every spanish speaking store/other languages if needed.

They need the big fundraisers to call attention to the "Big Fix" rather than to the AR demonstrators killing pet store business. Los Angeles/So Cal is rife with ARs everywhere. Well they got what they wanted, MSN. It simply cannot work there. They can expand those shelters forever but shelters are not what saves pets. It takes about 30 yrs even if you do the altering. To help it along you need scads of rescuers with people who want medium sized, male mixed breeds. with the AR push for every med-lg dog is dangerous, you can see the problem. The ARs created most of it. But then they blame the public of course. No Kill requires more than 2 elements to work. MSN and ARs are 2 elements. oh yeah, petdefense (http://www.petdefense.wordpress.com) has the Dog Fancy thing re the fraudulent Peta ad---an apology taking up one entire page by the editor.

[MichelleD]

Feel for Boks? Are you joking? That asswipe is trying to get MSN passed in the entire state - that isn't the fault of anyone but himself. No one is making him and his staff abuse and kill animals and refuse to work with rescues.

Don't let your hate of AR excuse this guy's incompetence and love of killing.

[Caveat]

The fact is, the whole issue is BS.

There's no pet overpopulation problem. There is a human overpopulation problem globally, but I don't see anybody advocating MSN for humans - which I might actually support.

S. Kennedy is correct, as usual. Most of the dogs who find themselves homeless are large, adolescent to young adult male pups.

My dogs are altered because one came that way and the other two, whom I obtained past the puppy stage, were neutered at the request of my friend the breeder. Next time, I'll have to seriously consider whether I want to go that route, in view of the extinction plan.

The AR/AL crew are achieving their goals - the end of animal husbandry. They have the same facts we have. The difference is that they don't care about what's true, only what helps them to push their agenda. Kind of like a lot of politicians today.

Boks deserves no sympathy at all. He stated himself that this isn't about saving cats and dogs. A rare slip from the AR/AL camp.

It's about killing as many cats and dogs as possible, denigrating breeders, making pet ownership as difficult as possible.

It's perverted and evil - but that's what happens when a good idea (animal welfare) is picked up and twisted by corrupt and deranged people, which is what we see with the lunatic fringe in AR/AL.

Humans. The most dangerous, callous, killing animals on earth.

[MichelleD]

AL?? I don't even know this one??

"Humans. The most dangerous, callous, killing animals on earth."

I'm going to steal this for my GhettoSweetP tshirt line.

[Caveat]

AL = Animal Liberation, the foundation of all this crap, but not at all resembling its roots - which most of the proselytizers today are completely unaware of, otherwise they wouldn't be promoting the killing and sterlization of animals. Duh.

Change 'killing' to 'murderous', reads better. I've been nicknamed The Fiddler by my cohorts in the DLCC for a reason :>)

[s kennedy]

I'm a little late on this...but--I do feel for the guy, even if he's an idiot. What many people don't know is that the AR people (ADL-Los Ang, in particular)have stated that everything wrong there is all his fault. Of course that's not the case, it was all F'd up BEFORE he got there. I do understand he is heavily criticized. So are most shelter directors. But when your life is threatened, you might think twice about what you would do. As I have said 100's of times, no one can instantly turn LA around. We have pulled from LA shelters. They just plain have too many dogs that people do not want, and they have no FOCUSED-targeted low income family altering. They stopped it years ago. Now all of a sudden they want to start it back up and expect a miracle? Please. Anyone who knows shelter problems, rescue, and dog problems, knows that is not how it works. I live in CA. Believe me, 50,000 animals is a lot. Even 25,000 is a lot if no one wants that particular dog. Don't be misled by what a lot of rescues say, or from hearsay. I know what is going on and it's not a secret that no one can turn LA around. Not that quickly. Not when nothing has been done for years and then you expect great results. It will not happen. Esp not when you have Charlotte Laws in there, shelter morale down the drain, smoke/fire bombing, demonstrations and threats to the government, websites which target workers, and rescue people who now are supposed to give name,address,phone,and pers info for adopters to the government? In Sacto, that issue came up at City shelter. After counsel said it would be an invasion of privacy as the shelter willingly released the animals to the rescues, that ended the obligation to turn over private records of any new adopters. That is the adopters responsibility to register his/her animal, not the rescue's job to be the nanny. I agree and would never turn that info over. They also wanted all foster home names, address, phone, pers info. I refused and so did all the other rescues. that is crazy and i would not do it. Now they say in LA the pet stores need to do it and the rescues. They can kiss my you know WHAT.