So on Saturday morning shelter manager Gil Moreno personally chose numerous dogs to go on that morning’s kill list. Why is the Carson shelter killing prior to opening on a Saturday you ask? No idea. But it literally appears as if Gil just looked at a numerically ordered list of ID#s, highlighted a section of digits, and killed all of the dogs that that string of numbers represented. That’s Gil’s managerial style. This is his definition of an “evaluation,” what honestly amounts to nothing more than pin the tail on the donkey. Here is 3 of his casualties from that morning… They appear numerically in a row, but I’m sure that that’s simply a coincidence and that I’m a conspiracy theorist.

1st dog, Annie: #A4600004, came in as a stray on 6/30, was made available on 7/5 and killed the morning of 7/6.
2nd dog: #A4600005, came in as a stray on 6/30, was made available on 7/5 and killed the morning of 7/6.
3rd dog: #A4600006, came in as a stray on 6/30, was made available on 7/5 and killed the morning of 7/6.

More known deaths…
1st dog, Reece: Came in as a stray on 7/1, was made available on 7/6 and killed the morning of 7/8.
2nd dog, Molly Mae: Came in as an owner surrender on 7/1, was made available on 7/6 and killed the morning of 7/8.
3rd dog: Came in on 6/29 and killed as soon as she became available.
4th dog: Came in on 6/28 and killed days after he became available.
5th dog: Came in on 7/2 and killed as soon as she became available.

Every pictured dog was friendly. I spent a decent amount of time with every dog pictured here except the 2 below Annie. They were both in quarantine so access was limited. One was a 10-year-old owner surrender and the other was a 3-year-old Mastiff-mix. They should have been given a chance, they weren’t. None of them were.

Annie was a wonderful dog. She was my favorite. She was super scared and shy. She was so scared that Dianne had to physically carry her from her kennel. She was taken to the play yard and Annie got to see how nice people treated her. She was wonderful. She laid close to me and Dianne and gave us love and affection. After 15 minutes or so in the play yard she was grinning widely and had a noticeable pep in her step. She brilliantly walked all the way back to her kennel on the leash. She was happy and smiling, and the above photo was taken right as she was being put back into her kennel for the day. She was 1 year old.

Reece was a little munchkin. Another shy and scared dog. She laid, frozen, by the coiled up water hose. Her body sank into the concrete, as to give off the impression that she was silently wishing that this was all just a bad dream. She was also eventually brought to the play yard and trusted us explicitly. She just liked to be held. I next saw Reece 5 days later and she came right up to me at the cage. This was the total opposite response of what anyone got on the day that she was impounded. She embraced my rubs and licked my hands. Someone organizing a rescue-based program saw her video and wanted to put her on television on Wednesday. They emailed Gil twice, once on Friday and another (specifically asking for Reece) on Sunday. They got no response either time. Reece was killed on Monday morning. She was 6 months old.

Molly Mae was a chubby checker. She was like the female version of Dianne’s dog, Falcor, who she found on the freeway in 2011. Molly Mae immediately came into the play yard and plopped on her back, rolling and grunting as her belly was rubbed. She was a total ham, much like Lancelot was. She literally stayed on her back the majority of the time that she was in the yard. Most of the pictures that I took of her were of her laying upside down, eyes closed and probably thinking of something other than this shelter. Glad we could give her that. Her prior owner dumped her here. They got to leave her, out of sight and out of mind. She was not seen by the staff for the highly adoptable dog that she was. She was simply seen as cage space and murdered less than 48 hours after she became available. She was 5 years old.

The 3 below them? 10 months old, 2 years old and 1 year old. All super sweet. Beautiful, amazing and loving dogs. People deserved to know them, and they deserved to make someone really happy.

Instead, all of these pictured dogs (and many more) are dead. Dead, while kennels sit empty and emails go unanswered and volunteers get micro-managed and members of the public get fear-mongered. Dead, while life-saving programs cease to exist. Dead, while dogs go unevaluated and others sit illegally held and others sit unable to be taken out because of breed discrimination “policies” and others await their exit that hasn’t come yet because certain staff members frown upon doing actual work. Dead, and everyone else non-affiliated with the actual person or persons that dumped the dog or allowed it to get loose is to blame, everyone except the shelter power players that decided to kill them. You will continue to be called out. Not everyone is asleep at the wheel.