‘That’s My Dog!’

0
517
IMG 5166
A sign held by a protestor featuring the Siberian husky, Tac, who was euthanized at the Harbor Animal Shelter. Photo by Chris Villanueva

Animal Activists Protest Rising Euthanizations at Harbor Shelter

By Alejandro Barlow,Editorial Intern

No-kill shelter activist, Ina Perry, recounted the experience of encountering an 11-year-old kid child pointing at her sign with a picture of a 4-year-old Siberian husky. The boy said, “Hey that’s my dog!” When he realized why the activists were holding signs with a photo of his dog, he began to cry and walked away. Perry wanted to tell the boy they were out there protesting for Tac and other dogs to keep it from happening again, but the boy walked away sobbing, leaving a pit in Perry’s stomach.

Perry and others gathered outside Harbor Pet Shelter Sept. 29 in protest of the euthanizations. Tac and 29 more dogs were euthanized in three months at the harbor shelter location, Perry said.

Harbor Animal Shelter offers data to the public through its website via The Woof Report. In year-over-year statistics between August 2024 and 2023, 693 animals were euthanized in the six Los Angeles Animal Society shelters, which are operated by the city. In comparison, the six shelters euthanized 644 animals between August 2022 and 2023. Of those animals, 226 dogs were euthanized from 2023 to 2024 compared to 102 from 2022 to 2023. At the harbor shelter, the report shows 26 dogs were euthanized from 2023 to 2024 compared to nine dogs from 2022 to 2023.The executive director of Best Friends Animal Society, Brittany Thorn, explained that the shelters in the Los Angeles Animal Society are all a part of the no-kill initiative. No-kill shelters prioritize animal adoptions and services that aid in keeping pets with families. The benchmark for no-kill shelters is that 90% of the animals get out of the shelter alive, Thorn said.

“Adoptions are a little bit down … year over year from last year, and that’s the case across the country. But what we see is adoption rates are still at a good pace in LA, but intake [of pets at the shelters] is way up,” said Thorn.

According to the harbor dhelter website, the shelter is operating at capacity due to more people surrendering their pets and more stray animals being picked up off the street. Shelters continue to take in animals if surrendering the pet is the only option for pet owners.

Harbor Shelter posted a disclosure on its website, that reads, “Please reconsider surrendering your pet to a shelter as the six city shelters continue to operate at max capacity. LA Animal Services offers alternative solutions to help keep pets and families together, that include Home to Home, Pet Food Pantry, and helpful resource guides and we work closely with intervention groups who will provide assistance with pet retention.”

Research has shown that abandoned pets left to go feral in urban environments tend to have outsized impacts on the local ecosystems, resulting in the extinction of other animal species in a given area via increased competition. To keep the pets off the street and alleviate some overcrowding in the shelters, harbor and the five other LA Animal Society shelters rotate and move the animals between them when space becomes available.

In 2023, councilwomen Eunisses Hernandez and Traci Park presented a motion to place an immediate and indefinite moratorium on the issuance of new breeding permits.

“The Los Angeles Department of Animal Services (DAS) is facing a dire and inhumane crisis in our shelters. One of the most visible pieces of this crisis is the overcrowding of animals in these shelters. While there are myriad factors that have gotten us to where we are today- from a dearth of pet-friendly rental units to insufficient numbers of pets being spayed and neutered — a pressing issue that is within the City’s immediate control is the issuance of breeding permits. As of July 31, 2023, DAS had issued a total of 1,141 breeding permits for this calendar year, with many more projected to be issued by the end of 2023,” they wrote.

IMG 5136
Protestors rally in front of Harbor Animal Shelter Sept. 29.
Photo by Chris Villanueva

The activists are calling for new leadership at LA Animal Services to fix the capacity issue. They also propose that the shelters and the city need to bring back the free spay and neutering that was available at different locations before COVID-19.

They also note that catch-and-release neutering programs are effective in controlling stray animal populations. In 2020, the animal advocate nonprofit, Alley Cat Allies, created the program, Trap-Neuter-Return, which was successful in helping the cat population by catching the animals and taking them to a place to be neutered for free or low cost.

Activist Laureen Swing said “Young healthy animals and middle-aged animals are euthanized, they are not really given a chance for whatever reason. The situation in society is that we have backyard breeders who can’t find homes for the animals. Then we have the real breeders who breed purebred dogs who sometimes have to give up animals too, because they can’t find homes for them and they are going to the shelter.”

Harbor Animal Shelter staff member Llerenas, who asked only to be identified by her last name, works on the fieldwork side of the shelter, responding to distress calls or reports on backyard breeders on a daily basis. Llerenas said that the public brings more animals to the shelter than her team does. The Woof Report shows an intake of 4,145 animals as of August 2023 to 2024 and took in 4,056 in 2023.

Llerenas said people can ask about fostering animals to make room in the kennels on-site. The Woof Report shows 50 animals (eight of which were dogs) in 2024 went to foster homes and 45 animals, three of which were dogs, went to foster homes from the Harbor animal shelter in 2023.

 

Tell us what you think about this story.