The Los Angeles Department of Animal Care and Control (DACC) care must follow the mandates of Social Conscious Sheltering and maximize lives saved. Specifically, we are asking the DACC to:

1. Follow the mandates or Social Conscious Sheltering and provide help and care for all animals.

2. Intake kittens of all ages, with or without a nursing mother. Accept stray friendly cats.

3. Start a TNR program for community cats.

4. Allow rescue only (RO) dogs to become available to the public after displaying improved behavior.  Moreover, give RO dogs time to be pulled; 14 days is not sufficient time to properly assess and give time for improved behavior after being impounded.

5. Open the shelters to the public with strict Covid practices.  Stop requiring appointments to meet and adopt animals.

DACC is the largest shelter system in the country but is in no way even close to being a model for other shelters. When Covid hit, they changed their policies which led them to decrease their intake by 75%.  They are telling the public to "leave cats where they were found" which means that thousands of cats and kittens are being left out in the streets to breed and/or die without humane care.  They are also making it difficult for owners to surrender their pets as is witnessed by numerous social media posts.  This can lead to even more abandoned cats on the streets.   

Every animal that comes into a shelter should have a fair chance at adoption and proper care and attention as needed.  The public should not be afraid to bring a dog or cat to the shelter because they fear their found or beloved pet will be killed. The shelter should be just that: a shelter, a place for animals to seek care, shelter while awaiting a new home.

More dogs are being killed at the shelter because of behavior.  It seems that any dog who growls or bares teeth when meeting another dog, even if does so out of fear, not aggression, is labeled as an unadoptable dog, and is highly likely to die in the shelter.

Shelters should not continue to be closed to the public.  The public has the right to visit the shelters.  They can make more educated choices as to the animal they adopt when they can see and interact with all the available animals at a shelter.  The animals also benefit from socializing with the public.

Please note: when you make a donation on change.org, you are not donating to Golden Years Dog Sanctuary or the shelter; you are donating to change.org.