Special message to South Orange County Residents
Congratulations - you are not part of the problem, you are part of the
solution. You take such good care of your pets, are responsible, and
caring. And as a result, there is actually a shortage of little
"ankle biter" dogs in your animal shelters. The kind that are
killed with alarming frequency in LA shelters.
So we are trying very hard to move as many of these dogs down to you as
possible. Many rescuers (me included) are rescuing them one at a time and
driving them down to you. But we need to move faster.
The Irvine Animal Care Center has a new program called the "Third Chance
Program". They are rescuing dogs from LA County and other shelters
when they have room and bringing them back for YOU to adopt. Please visit
their web site (which isn't updated often) to get their address and phone
number. Irvine Animal
Shelter
Also check out the Orange County Animal Shelter's web site. They aren't
as close as you would like, but a lot closer than downtown LA. Orange
County Animal Shelter Web Site A very
nice web site.
Here are some options we are working on. First, Los Angeles City has
something called a Mighty Mover - which is a self contained mobile adoption
unit. It will hold about 50-75 ankle biters, fuzzies, chi's, lhasa's,
etc. Just what you wanted. We need a place to park it. That
should be easy. We are going to approach PetSmart and Petco and see who
bites.
We are making slow progress, very slow progress, and in the meantime dozens
of little highly desirable dogs are killed every day.
The difficult part is that we are required by law (and we agree with this)
that all dogs/cats be spayed/neutered before adoption. And that's the hang-up.
We know you don't want to drive into LA to pick up your pet after
spay/neuter. We need to find a place down in your neighborhood where this
can be done. Anyone have any ideas? Please email me,
carol@amrt.net
if you do.
The LA City shelter system is not particularly adoption friendly. It is
virtually impossible, due to their hours, for anyone even living next door to
adopt without taking about half a day off of work. They are closed Monday, open only until 5 the rest of the week. You go on Saturday
or Sunday and
adopt a dog, pick it up on Monday. That's how it works.
HOWEVER, the LA County shelter system is very much adoption
friendly. Still closed Sunday, but open the rest of the week from noon
until 7:00 at night. Even down in south county you can get to Carson
and/or Downey in time. And they have some incredibly nice dogs, and their
own web site which is very impressive. We augment it with our own photos
and comments, but really feel they have done a great job.
So what you could do is "clean out" the LA County shelters, leaving
the rescuers to work on the LA City shelters. How does that sound for a
plan?? Or clean Irvine out so they can then go to LA and get some more.
