DEAD DOGS WALKING
Man's Best Friend is in urgent danger. Man is not his best friend in return!
4-5 million animals are killed in U.S. shelters each year. While there is growing awareness of backyard breeders, puppy mills, and the thousands surrendered daily at shelters, it is a far cry from much needed reforms for those whose lives depend on it NOW. California is just one example that illustrates the vast & urgent needs. The NKLA (No Kill Los Angeles) movement has garnered celebrity support to make L.A. a no kill city. However, state and city government officials are working against reaching such a potential milestone that would greatly propel reforms such as enforcing unlicensed breeding laws and mandating spay & neuter. California Governor Jerry Brown, ironically, a dog owner himself, is calling for the repeal of the Hayden Law, which has implemented much needed protections for shelter animals, such as longer holding times for strays and vet care for the ill or injured. It has been so effective, it has served as a model for other states. Yet it has been suspended (claiming due to budget crisis) since 2009, & thus, 250,000 more dogs have been killed due to lack of funding. It is not a financial crisis; such budget-based arguments are misguided at best. It is a mindset problem: a mere percentage of bureaucratic fluff salaries, mismanaged or corrupted budget funds, and taxpayers' dollars used to euthanize thousands daily could be better utilized to implement task forces to enforce existing unlicensed breeding laws and mandate new ones, such as spay & neuter and education for anyone getting an animal, (which is being successfully done in more competently & financially organized countries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYBt6rfsj6w)
Please be the voice for the animals whose lives depend on the Hayden Law remaining intact & new reforms to be implemented. Contact representatives with your pleas: http://news.change.org/stories/day-of-action-save-california-s-shelter-animals-save-the-hayden-law
Without this law's protections, ill & injured animals can sit untreated in pain for days before being killed (which is already happening too frequently even with the law in place). Many are mislabeled aggressive or unsocial just because they do not feel well and are terrified. Often, babies are taken from mothers, and the moms are euthanized, seniors and those with special needs are surrendered, left without vet care, and discarded. Puppies as young as a few weeks are euthanized. While rescues work frantically to save them with little resources or help, yet the ignorant or misinformed shop for a pup in a pet store, often the product of a severely neglected ill puppy mill mother or discarded mother from someone's backyard. Rescues work tirelessly to get animals out, but they are overworked, out of room, and out of funds. But the animals keep coming into shelters. The shelters are not the enemy. They are full and overtaxed as well.
However, the General Manager of L.A. Animal Services, Brenda Barnette, has made an order that will over burden shelters & rescues even more than the dire position they are already in. She has called for the elimination of all LAAS New Hope Coordinators, who have been the main staff helping rescues save countless animals' lives. The urgent need now is to save the New Hope Coordinator positions, before the announcement, (which will be made after Best Friends major adoption event the weekend of April 27). Representatives (whose contact information appears at the end of this entry) need to be contacted urgently that supporters want to keep the New Hope Coordinators, so it is easier and faster for adopters and rescue, and for shelter staff, to save countless animals' lives. Barnette's claimed budget argument is false & manipulative information at best. Barnette's decision to abolish New Hope Coordinators will rescind one of the most productive and life-saving positions in L.A. city shelters, ultimately costing even more funds for additionally needed staff to deal with even more animals who will no longer be adopted from shelters, and added of cost of killing even more than the thousands that already die daily.
Before there were New Hope Coordinators, calls & visits from rescuers were treated as a nuisance and intrusion because there was no defined staff member whose job was to help coordinate adoptions and rescues. Ed Boks, the previous figurehead, albeit he made mistakes, but the one gem he gave was the New Hope Program. Having a New Hope Coordinator at each shelter assigned to help rescue has streamlined the process, saving time for rescue & shelter staff, so more animals could be saved, (which is still very daunting, given the severe numbers in full shelters and countless killed daily). But New Hope at least made the whole process more efficient for everyone. By eliminating these coordinators as Barnette has ordered, even more dogs will die while rescue has to go back to waiting on hold on severely tied up phone lines endlessly, tensions build on staff & rescue alike, & all while the very dog rescue may be calling about might be being put down in the meantime during all this wasted time. Direct New Hope contacts save lives. But doing away with them is what Brenda Barnette has ordered.
Her new plan is to further burden shelter and kennel managers to handle New Hope adoptions. Consider in the last year, the New Hope Coordinators processed 6,800 New Hope adoptions, yet Barnette proposes that managers who are already overworked with all the duties of managing the shelters will somehow gain the additional time & resources to process nearly 7,000 New Hope adoptions per year. Barnette will claim that she needs the New Hope Coordinators' bodies to assist with ACT work. What she fails to recognize is that New Hope Coordinators already do ACT work daily, and are New Hope Coordinators as an additional task (and they are not paid one penny extra for their New Hope Coordinator duties.) So with or without the New Hope Coordinators, shelter staff is still taking care of animals and adopting them out. The only change from Barnette eliminating New Hope Coordinators is that the New Hope adoption process reverts back to being horribly cumbersome, even more time-consuming for all, and dangerously even more deadly for the animals. Further, fewer animals will be adopted, which will result in consequences that more ACTs will be needed to take care of the additional animals still in the shelters. Besides New Hope staff doesnt get paid extra, the more hands required to deal with more dogs because less will be adopted out rebuts Barnette’s budget excuse. She is just re-shuffling the deck of who does the New Hope adoptions, but in a non-sensical manner that will leave more animals at the shelter, require more staff to care for them, and cause even more to be killed. Barnette’s new order is worse for the budget and for the animals' lives concerned.
The URGENT NEED is to save the New Hope Coordinator positions NOW! PLEASE CONTACT the representatives below & build support for saving the New Hope Coordinators!
Here is contact info:
Commissioners --
James Jensvold, DDS (818) 999-0900
Lisa McCurdy,
Alana Yanez (HSUS),
Tariq Khero,
Kathy Riordan,
City Council -- (Most important are Koretz, Alarcon, Zine and Wesson)
Paul Koretz
(213) 473-7005
Richard Alarcon
(213) 473-7007
Dennis Zine
(213) 473-7003
Mitch Englander
(213) 473-7012
Tom Labonge
(213) 473-7004
Paul Krekorian
(213) 473-7002
Eric Garcetti
(213) 473-7013
Bernard Parks
(213) 473-7008
Jan Perry
(213) 473-7009
Herb Wesson, Council President
(213) 473-7010
Jose Huizar
(213) 473-7014
Ed Reyes
(213) 473-7001
Tony Cardenas
(213) 473-7006
Bill Rosendahl
(213) 473-7011
Joe Buscaino
(213)-473-7015
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