As shocking as this headline is, it’s sadly very accurate. Just for the record: The Carson shelter was closed for Thanksgiving on 11/24 (sigh), closed the following day on 11/25 (??), and then reopened at 10a on 11/26. By my count that is 58 hours… 58 straight hours where they were closed to the potentially adopting & rescuing public… 58 straight hours where they made it their business to turn actual patrons away… Yet they continued to kill!

The specific killing of the 18 Pit Bull-type dogs mentioned in the title all happened between the 25th & 26th, I have no outcomes for the 24th. These are the actual faces of the dogs (minus 1) that were killed:

This very sweet boy had a CTA placed on his file on November 9th. For those not familiar with the term, a CTA stands for “commitment to adopt.” It is a step beyond an IP, which stands for “interested party.” When someone places an IP on a dog, other persons can come along and place IP’s on it as well. It is then up for whomever comes first to take the next step and make the commitment to adopt/rescue. That is when the CTA is put on the dog’s file. At that point, no one else can “get” the dog ahead of you, as YOU are in line to receive the dog. Also worth mentioning… To a networker, when a phone operator tells you that an animal has a CTA on it’s file, it gives you the assumption that the dog is spoken for.

Now onto the problem. Like I said earlier, the CTA was placed on the 9th. I didn’t find this out until AFTER he was killed. He was killed on the morning of 11/26. We called and ran his ID# on 11/24, and we were told that he had a CTA placed on his account. This is the first time that I’d heard of his CTA, so I was left to assume that it was recent and legitimate. It’s up to the operator to tell me otherwise, as I can’t see the screen they are looking at. When I was there on 11/26 he was no longer there, so my immediate thought was that he must have been picked up. I called on him that night, just to verify, and it was then that I learned that he had been killed that morning. Upon further discussion, the phone operator explained to me that the CTA was placed on 11/9, and that the potential adopter was given until 11/13 to come and pick up the dog. The operator mentioned that within the notes it stated that the shelter attempted to contact the individual, leaving them a voicemail. The adopter never showed up, or called back. There was only 1 call made by the shelter. I then re-verified with the operator that the CTA that remained on this dog’s account up until the day it was killed was the CTA placed on 11/9–it was.

What that means is that on the 13th when the adopter “never showed up,” the Carson shelter failed to REMOVE the CTA. This means that this dog had a bunk CTA on its account from the 13th until the 26th, when it was killed by the shelter. That CTA potentially kept anyone else from becoming another “interested party,” or more importantly, allowing another person to ever adopt the dog! Oh, and there’s one other thing… There was never a follow-up call made to the original individual who placed the CTA. You’d think that if they left the CTA on past the 13th, that maybe it was because they were “trying extra hard” to reach this person… And that would be GREAT, as it would show them going above and beyond what they are “required” to do. Think again. They just let the bunk CTA sit for 13 more days, and never once attempted to recontact the person. I know this because I specifically asked the operator and she went through the notes for me. Sadly, more evidence of Carson shelter staff incompetence. It horrifies me to think how many times this actually happens when no one is there to catch it.

RIP to this extremely nice boy who would greet me enthusiastically every single time that I would walk into building 100… I’m sorry.

This is a normal looking security camera. As you can see: The hood faces the front, pointing down (or in whatever direction you would want to film).

Here you see the camera pointing straight up and into the sky. Maybe they are trying to get some good video footage of the daily chemtrails? The airplanes leaving LAX? The local bird population?

Here you see the camera pointing straight into the ceiling. There’s nothing better than a video closeup of a fluorescent light!

And finally, the camera is pointing directly across the paved pathway and smack dab in the middle of a building wall. This camera is positioned too high as to capture any animals that may travel along this area.

Make no mistake about it, this is NOT coincidental placement. This was definitely something that was done purposely and strategically. What have these video screens missed?

Today at the Carson shelter I saw something that was really disturbing to me… Many of the volunteers had just gotten finished filling the cages in building 300 with donated blankets. Shortly thereafter the kennel workers entered the building and started to feed the dogs. After putting new food in each cage, 1 guy went and turned on the watering mechanism… This is a faucet system that is positioned over each bowl in the run. Instead of first emptying each dog’s water bowl individually (like when he opened the cage to feed them), this person just turned the water on full-blast, causing every water bowl to overflow within seconds. After 30 seconds each run (the inside) was full of water, the donated blankets were all soaked, and many of the food dishes were partially filled with water. The dogs were made very uncomfortable by all of this, and many (sick) puppies under the age of 8 weeks were left sitting in puddles of water. The individual in question carried on with his business, as if this was all normal operating procedure. He absolutely saw what was happening, and didn’t care in the slightest to do anything about it. This type of crap is just a prime example as to why I say that some of the staff are “completely careless” and just “going through the motions.”

Allow me to put myself in this individuals position… If I were him, I would have manually emptied each water bowl into the drainage system at the same time that I opened the cage to put the bowl of food in the run. That way, each dog would have an EMPTY water bowl and you could literally stand there at the faucet system and watch the closest dish fill up, stopping it right before the brim and knowing that EACH bowl would have the exact same amount of FRESH water in it (since every bowl was emptied first). It’s a simple thing, and it just takes someone to give a damn, as well as a few extra seconds at each cage… There would be no flooding of the kennel floors, no scared dogs, no wet blankets, no wet food. Unfortunately, the guy who did this today is the same guy that always throws their food bowls into the cages–often times spilling them onto the floor–and then slamming each cage door shut with an unnecessary amount of ferocity. This is of course done while he wears noise-canceling headphones and goes from cage to cage like a robot who doesn’t even care to notice the animals inside. This kennel workers name is “R. Celaya.”

How is this type of daily mundane effort tolerated by management? Well, in my opinion it’s because the institution of sheltering from an LA County perspective suffers from a lack of leadership and compassion, starting at the very top (Marcia Mayeda, Gil Moreno) and trickling down and onto the very individuals that they employ. Of course, it leaves only the animals to suffer the consequences. Many of them catching colds, kennel cough (URI), pneumonia etc., and then being killed because they “showed symptoms.”

Gil Moreno ~ Carson Manager
gmoreno@animalcare.lacounty.gov

Marcia Mayeda ~ LA County Director
mmayeda@animalcare.lacounty.gov

And yet again, the shelter is claiming “parvo” as their reasoning for immediately snuffing this dog’s life out… Funny thing is though, when I was there photographing the dogs on Monday, this baby was sharing a cage with 2 other puppies! Last I checked parvo is HIGHLY contagious. Not that I believe their “parvo” claim to begin with, because the dog was never tested and there was no diagnosis made by an actual veterinarian… It’s just an easy justifier that allows them to get the dog out of the building. But, if it was true and it was “soooo obvious” that this dog had parvo–so much so that they didn’t even bother to do a test to confirm it, because you know, they could just automatically tell because they’re geniuses… Well then why in the hell would anyone put this dog out on the floor? With 2 other puppies, nonetheless! Aren’t they supposed to do an intake exam? This things smells like shit, and unfortunately this baby is no longer with us…

The top half of this image shows this dog’s kennel card upon intake–and it remained on her cage for many days after, with that same ID#. The bottom half of the image shows the kennel card from Monday, 11/21–miraculously with an entirely new ID#. This dog was impounded on 11/16 and numerous people have been networking her photographs since almost immediately after I uploaded them on the 17th. That means that in most cases confusion will likely win out, and that all the networking done over the last 5+ days has been linked with an incorrect ID#. Lastly, why/how is this happening? I understand that it may have been a simple oversight, or that to most people it may seem like something small–but for this dog it’s her lifeline. Many Pit Bull-type dogs are only given the minimum amount of time at the shelter, so to have something random and unorganized like this happen, it’s just really disappointing. She is currently still at the Carson shelter…

*Update* This dog was killed on 11/25.

So I’ve been in the process of doing multiple public records requests concerning the Carson shelter and the dogs that reside at their facility. 90% of my requests have been stonewalled, but I finally received the medical records concerning Rocky, a dog who was set to be rescued back in August of 2011. He was neutered on 8/19 and unfortunately died immediately after the surgery.

»These« public records show that Rocky was given a rabies vaccine right before he was put under. I know this because the date is the same, and they obviously wouldn’t have vaccinated a dead dog. If for any reason they vaccinated him immediately after he came back up from anesthesia but before he stopped breathing, well, that’s just as bad. I shutter to think if this is actually standard operating procedure inside of these shelters…

Vaccines, the over-vaccinating of animals, the side effects that come with, adverse reactions (both immediate and longer term), the potential for immune system damage etc. all have been thoroughly debated in the health community. Unfortunately the pharmaceutical industry does their best to steer the discussion, but we all know that when you actually advise a natural doctor the information is very much of a different tune. Vaccines ARE dangerous, and it’s horrifying that these dogs are getting these shots on the same day that they are undergoing surgeries and other procedures. Reactions can be magnified by the strain and stress of surgery, the anesthetic could react to the vaccine or vice versa, this is seriously playing with fire. Going further, the anesthesia already suppresses the immune system, so if a vaccine is introduced into the system at this same time, it is that much more capable of causing a long-lasting ailment linked with the blood, i.e. autoimmune conditions.

R.I.P. Rocky, you were a handsome and sweet dog.