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