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.