These were many of the dogs that were in the facility, impounded behind me, when I filmed this Christmas video. I wanted to show how the smallest action brightens up a shelter dog’s day, and try to inspire more people to want to take an interest in spending some time with them. Sadly, this details much of the devastating (post-Christmas) result. It’s certainly not right. Please do whatever you can to show your local shelter animals that there are people out there that care about their well being, and that want to spend time with them, even if it’s the smallest gesture. It is important.

This is the world’s longest obstruction, err, I mean construction project. It has been out in front of the Carson shelter (with different internal sections taped off as well), in one form or another, for many months now. Totally ridiculous. And for what? What are they building? What are they bettering? All this is serving to do is give the general public a visual impression that the shelter is basically down for maintenance. It is, at times, almost inaccessible to those that want to go inside. There isn’t signage, there isn’t a posted explanation. They need to build what they are building and get the hell out of there.

Remember sweet Amelia? Well she was finally able to leave the shelter today but unfortunately while waiting around to be “temperament tested” she contracted pneumonia… Now the rescuer had to hospitalize her immediately upon leaving the shelter. It would be super helpful for Sasha if people could donate what they can to cut down on her bill (attached at bottom). Thanks for considering, or even sharing this plea! Donations can be sent via PayPal to: loveleorescue@gmail.com or through the ChipIn she has set up. They can also be called directly into the hospital (Malibu Coast) at 310-317-4560, be sure to designate the donation for “Amelia.”

My heart’s broken. Of the 58 dogs that I met at the Carson shelter on 12/14, here’s how things broke down: 5 non-pits were saved, 1 was killed. All 6 Pit Bull puppies (under 3 months) were saved. 3 PIT BULLS ARE STILL THERE AND ALIVE. Of the 43 (non-puppy) Pit Bulls that are no longer at the shelter: 2 were adopted, 1 was rescued, 3 were returned, 37 were killed. Again… Of the 43 Pit Bulls that were not visual infants and who are no longer at the facility, 37 WERE KILLED. That’s an 86% snapshot holiday kill-rate for the Carson adult dogs that were deemed to have Pit Bull in their mix. These murders and the blood running from them are on the hands of Gil Moreno, Aaron Reyes and Marcia Mayeda. It’s a total disgrace what happens here, and yet these individuals continue to retain their positions in the face of enormous and consistent failure. Can someone else please pay attention?

What’s better… Increasing your monthly adoption and rescue rate by 20, 25, 35, even 50% and then being honest about it and celebrating that achievement? Or dishonestly implying that you killed no “adoptable” or “treatable” animals for an entire month, when proof shows that that absolutely didn’t happen? I don’t know about y’all, but I prefer the transparency in tandem with the striving to be better each month, even if it falls short of an ultimate goal. There’s always next time. There’s always trying again. That’s far better than celebrating a fake achievement that never happened, being advertised now on the backs of the animals that you killed and called “unadoptable” in order to pretend that they never existed. It’s an appeasement to a public that mostly doesn’t know any better, and a false representation of what you could actually be doing. It is possible, but not by shunning the proven route in order to actually do it. Embrace what you are then. Try to get there another way, if you must, but do it honestly. Is that too much to ask? The fact that they apparently can’t feel good about the first option, when that’s the true reality, shows a disturbing need to create a fantasy world instead. That shouldn’t make anyone feel too cozy about an intended outcome and the work that is or isn’t being put in to actually get there. Yes, this post is about NKLA.

And just for the record: I love Best Friends. I respect and appreciate many people that work for them. To those that will undoubtedly view this as me “bashing” them, you need to grow up. Don’t attempt to divide and conquer me here. This isn’t about me being an enemy to them, even if they (Best Friends) want to convince themselves that it’s true in order to not have an open and transparent go at things. It’s usually easier to just discard a dissenting opinion than to ponder on it and potentially change for the better. But it’s not wrong to question what’s going on, ever. I love Best Friends, but I love these scared and abandoned Pit Bulls far more. Don’t kill a number of them and then tell people that you didn’t. And if you keep doing it, people like myself will keep telling other people that you did.

A friend recently posted a photo of Enzo, after it was revealed that he was killed due to a “behavioral mark,” with the caption: “So much for No Kill December.” Yeah, that about sums things up.

I’d like to add: Why in the heck is there even a thing called “No Kill December”? What’s the need of there being a specialized month meant to signify what NKLA’s already been giving the public the impression that they’re not doing all 12 months out of the year? And then during this 1 specialized month that they’ve set aside to not kill they still end up killing dogs? Reveals a lot. So for real, is this a genuine No Kill sheltering system or an advertising campaign cloaked over a killing system that goes 7 city shelters deep?

Lastly, a “behavioral mark” for Enzo? By whom? There’s people that actually met him that would dispute this categorization… NKLA’s own side page, set up specifically for the December campaign, claims: “This can be the first month that no healthy and treatable animals are killed in our city shelters.” Well, apparently it can’t, because Enzo was both healthy and treatable. Oh, but he isn’t going to “officially” count, due to someone putting the equivalent of a chalkboard check mark by their students name. Dubious. I realize that what’s commonly known as a true No Kill shelter (No Kill Advocacy Center) may occasionally have to kill an extremely aggressive or an extremely sick dog. Enzo was neither. Leaves me to wonder how many other L.A. City dogs went the way that he did during this month of December?

Indefensible. Carson killed this 5-month-old puppy, Money (pictured top), after only 8 days. Not only was this dog a baby, but she had this endearing quality where her tongue never fully went into her mouth. How can you not market this dog? How can you not put a little effort forth? Lazy ass management who does nothing but kill and cash pay checks. You guys suck. Unmerry Christmas to you.

Not only that, but yesterday there was like 20 empty cages while I was there handing out treats. I have them on video. Why in the world does this shelter have to kill babies like Money and Little Lion Man (pictured bottom) while numerous cages sit empty? And their lives don’t take precedent over the others who were killed, I just mention them as examples of easy targets for the shelter to promote.

The above picture illustrates simply 1 reason out of so many why our current kill-happy sheltering system needs totally overhauled. This is a puppy that was either surrendered or brought in by Animal Control and placed in the intake cage that sits at the entrance of the shelter. It was likely surrendered from a walk-in. I saw the puppy when I walked out of one of the buildings, on my way to continue photographing. This poor dog was 90% dead. His head was moving slightly and he was attempting to stretch his little legs. With all the things that I’ve seen at the Carson shelter, even I was taken aback by a puppy in this kind of shape just openly laying out in the middle of the elements (it was very cold and raining) on the floor of this cage. I tried to talk to the puppy and then quickly opened the gate to get a picture. I wanted to pet him so badly but opted against it because he was likely really sick, and I wasn’t even halfway through with photoing so was concerned that I’d potentially pass something onto another dog. As I was backing up one of the vets appeared out of nowhere. He didn’t say anything to me, simply reached into the cage and stuck a cotton swab up this puppy’s backside, pulled it out and then walked away. It was so robotic, like a living being wasn’t actually laying there. I was amazed. I waited around for a few more minutes to see if he’d come back, he didn’t. I moved along and 10 minutes later had passed Aileen, who was also there photoing the dogs, and I asked her if she’d seen the dog out in the intake cage. She said that she hadn’t. 10 more minutes pass, Aileen makes her way out of the building that I was in and grabs her own peek at the puppy laying out in the front. She told me later that she’d actually went into the front office and asked them if they were aware of the dog being out there. Their response? “Yeah, we know.”

I don’t know about y’all, but I find it extremely depressing and disturbing that this puppy sat out in that cage for well over 20 minutes. Not only that, but while staff (admittedly) and at least 1 “vet” were completely aware, and they did nothing. This puppy was likely very sick, and I’m certainly not a vet, but who’s to say that it couldn’t have been saved? I don’t know, I don’t know if he’s still alive or what ended up happening to him. What I do know is that even if this dog ultimately died, the treatment and lack of attention that he got leading up to his death is really distressing. He was not taken back into their hospital or medical room, he was not even taken into any room. Either of those things should have been done immediately. Instead, he was just placed out in the cold, on a metal floor. Even if he was extremely sick, couldn’t one of the staff members put some gloves on and held him until he passed? Done something, anything. They just remained seated knowing full well that he was laying out there. Hell, I’d of reached in and cradled him myself (even though no one outside of the staff is “allowed” to open up those intake gates or touch the animals inside of them), had I not had only 30 more minutes of decent light and an another entire building plus left to photograph.

Couldn’t this shelter have offered this puppy anything more than what they did? Just as a basic response and reaction, anything more? My answer is a resounding yes. Yet here I sit detailing what did and didn’t happen. This is a proper sliver of insight into how this shelter operates. They have some good folks that work there, mostly long-established volunteers and a few that are on the actual staff. But they are outnumbered and out influenced by the opposite of what they are. It is a problem. It is the biggest problem that exists.

This past Tuesday I attended a Commission meeting at the East Valley shelter where Brenda Barnette (L.A. City General Manager), the Los Angeles Board of Animal Services Commissioners and the ASPCA, as well as many members of the public, turned out to debate the issue of temperament testing. Click here to read the agenda and any of the accompanying documents.

For over a decade the L.A. City portion of the sheltering system has “officially” banned the using of so-called temperament tests. This was probably done to seem as if they were avoiding condemning adoptable pets to death, as well as to avoid focusing on specific breeds and so on. Well, as many of the public speakers pointed out, just because something is “officially” not in use doesn’t mean it isn’t already in use. To think that L.A. City wasn’t already temperament testing would be foolish. They were, and they are. Point taken. My thing about going to this meeting was to speak to how giving temperament tests in a shelter environment is already an unfair and unreliable idea, as well as to speak out against how these tests are then in many cases used to routinely put scary labels onto dogs that will then serve to justify their death just days (or hours) later. This is every kill shelters magic trick. For example, L.A. County disgracefully condemns hundreds, if not thousands of Pit Bulls to death every year with this very tactic. And sure, L.A. City does too. After all, they are all kill shelters no matter what kind of advertising campaigns they roll out to state otherwise.

So the question becomes, do you trust the as-is staff to implement these programs and then to use them the way that they are being promoted? Because, on its face, SAFER seems like something that would be helpful. At least the ASPCA wants people to believe so. Well, my answer to that question is no. I don’t trust the majority of staff at any current high-kill shelter to use (or be allowed to use) this program for any other reason than to kill dogs, or to justify the killing that they are already doing. It’s kind of simple for me: Actions count. Not words, not fudged numbers, not new theories being implemented by the same status quo.

Lastly, the most confusing thing about this entire meeting to me was this… SAFER is an ASPCA program. The ASPCA opposes genuine No Kill (ala Nathan Winograd, No Kill Advocacy Center). Yet, L.A. City has this campaign called NKLA which makes the public believe that they are eventually going to somehow get to No Kill (ala Nathan Winograd), albeit by using philosophically opposite actions in comparison to the many things which have already been proven to work elsewhere (ala Nathan Winograd). Following? Because it’s quite the enigma. And this isn’t about the rescues and organizations that make up the “coalition,” this is about Best Friends, as they ultimately have the power and have made the choices regarding what to do and what not to do. Another conundrum is that you can’t even begin to have any sort of a worthwhile discussion about No Kill with someone (this goes for anyone inside or outside of the coalition) who hasn’t even read “Redemption,” it’s that eye-opening of a book. Not simply read a “review,” not heard from a person who actually heard from another person. But actually read the book… I personally have no problem with NKLA’s goals, or striving to lower your kill numbers (duh), or making any genuine attempt to do anything to better the current system of death and destruction. I support you, I support those things, fully. But don’t be disingenuous, don’t mislead, don’t doublespeak. You can’t condemn Nathan Winograd privately and try to discredit what the No Kill Advocacy Center stands for, and without even genuinely having a desire to embrace any of their suggestions, while at the same time giving the public the impression that you are also striving to become No Kill. It’s basically nonsense. And people that are doing that are not to be trusted, in my opinion of course…

This last opinion is bound to get me in hot water with many local acquaintances but I simply need to go with my gut on this one. It’s a very important topic to discuss, and yet I’ve noticed that everyone seems to just want to ignore it for the “betterment of the cause.” Well does it really better the cause if this thing fails due to lack of effort, vision, courage, openness, transparency, honesty, ingenuity? Does it really better the cause if this then unfairly serves to further discredit the actual real No Kill communities that are out making it happen? I could be wrong, we’ll see, but there’s just something fundamentally foul about the complete shunning of actual results and the paths to those results.