*This was originally written on 8/5 and not posted until now because of Dianne’s first meeting with Gil Moreno, which hadn’t happened yet. He is now attempting to make her sign a “letter of expectation” in order to continue as a volunteer. This document apparently took many days to be doctored up by L.A. County’s administration department and was finally ready on Monday. No other volunteer is being asked to sign this. She has not seen a copy of the “letter of expectation” and her request to see it prior to their second meeting (which is tomorrow) was denied. The dog, referenced below as being in the play yard when Dianne was approached by Sgt. Webb, was killed days later. Dianne was also effectively barred from this weekend’s adoption events that she had signed up to work.

So today my girlfriend got notice that she was suspended from volunteering at the Carson shelter, pending a meeting with shelter manager Gil Moreno. This comes a day after getting in trouble while we were both onsite at the shelter and doing our normal routine of taking dogs back to the play yard and shooting videos of them for the purposes of networking them online. On top of that, another volunteer was also suspended and told to leave the shelter today. This girl is a 17-year-old high school student and one of the best volunteers that the Carson shelter even has. Their crimes? Taking dogs into the play yard. Being friendly with one another and making appearances in my videos. Dianne being my girlfriend. Sydney being an ally of my girlfriend’s. Yes, it’s that ridiculous.

This is the straight facts, no filter: The Carson shelter and manager Gil Moreno have instituted a shelter-specific policy that no “dominant breed” dog can be taken out of its kennel unless it has first passed a temperament test. This also doubles as an adoption policy, meaning no “dominant breed” dog can be adopted without first passing a temperament test. All non-“dominant breed” dogs do not even require that they be temperament tested. What is a “dominant breed”? Any dog that they say fits the bill, select staff members are the judge and the jury. All dogs then deemed by staff to be any part Pit Bull are classified as “dominant breed.” Not only is this breed-discriminatory legislation (which is against state law) on an in-house policy basis, but there is zero oversight and Mr. Moreno is essentially able to get away with each unjust “policy” that he decides on a whim to put into place. What this means is that the majority of all Pit Bull-type dogs are placed in their kennels and never taken out again until they are walked to the back to be euthanized. The Carson shelter does not do mandatory temperament testing of “dominant breed” dogs. They say they cannot due to not having enough staff. Yet, this shelter refuses to allow the volunteers the opportunity to help with testing, be trained on testing and ultimately alleviate some of that claimed burden by giving the tests themselves. What this means is that no “dominant breed” dog is even given a temperament test unless they first receive an interested party. What this means is that any “dominant breed” dog that doesn’t organically gain interest from a member of the adopting public will never receive a temperament test. What this means is that during their stay at the shelter those dogs are then banned from ever leaving their cage. No volunteer is allowed to socialize them, walk them, interact with them, run with them, play with them. Nothing. All of this pays no mind to the portion of this situation where the dog then has to pass the temperament test if it’s lucky enough to get one given to it in the first place. The discrimination and backwardness that goes hand in hand with the way these tests are so often given is a whole different topic entirely. Not to be forgotten, for those “dominant breed” dogs that do get scheduled for temperament tests it can routinely take this shelter 5-7 days to get around to administering them. So as a wanted dog sits in its cage waiting to be temperament tested, other dogs absolutely die for the excuse of “space.” Many dogs also often get sick while waiting, and these scenarios give rise to miscommunication and mistakes.

This was yesterday…

I was sitting in the empty play yard alone, waiting for Dianne to bring back another dog, when Sgt. Webb approached me and just started staring at me through the fence. Feeling awkward, I told him that a volunteer was coming right back and he just sort of gave me a nod and walked over to the side, out of view. As soon as Dianne could be seen approaching with another dog he reappeared and cut her off. Dianne motioned for me to come out of the cage, so I just walked out and went about my business walking through the runs.

Apparently Sgt. Webb asked which dog Dianne currently was handling and then went back to check its temperament test results. While he was doing this Dianne began playing with the dog in the play yard. He came right back and demanded that she immediately take the dog out of the play yard and put it back in the kennel because it had “failed” its temperament test. Dianne, feeling disgusted, went into advocacy mode for the dog that was happily sitting patiently by her side. She asked him, “Does he look aggressive to you?” She’d just been playing fetch with him for the last 10 minutes, and he was awesome! The dog was incredibly friendly and playful, and was doing great out in the yard. Sgt. Webb still claimed that he was aggressive and that she was violating policy by having him out of his kennel. A testy exchange ensued and Dianne came to find out that the dog was failed after an AC officer took him out of his kennel and he went to lunge at the front of the neighboring dog’s cage. That’s as far as the temperament test went. They put the dog back and failed him without even conducting the test. This dog had 2 different IPs (interested parties) on his file and they were very likely called back and told that he had “failed” his temp-test and was now unavailable for adoption.

Long story short, Dianne told Sgt. Webb that this was what was wrong with the Carson shelter. That they were routinely killing friendly dogs and that it was inhumane for them to never be able to be walked or interacted with. She was upset, tearing up as she spoke and internally furious. Sgt. Webb told her that she could ask Gil to have him re-tested tomorrow, and that he would update the dog’s notes and say not to euthanize him for 24 hours.

Dianne did just that, emailed Gil when she got home, and she was promptly rebuked when her request for a re-test was denied without explanation. She was then told that she was suspended until he could speak to her in person for violating the play yard protocol. She told him that she’d be at the shelter twice tomorrow, dropping and picking up a pair of dogs, but he said that he couldn’t meet with her then. Actually, he couldn’t meet with her until at least Wednesday. She then let him know that she’s pretty busy at work but could come in on Friday. Gil said that he wouldn’t be in on Friday, and oh yeah, he won’t be in on Thursday either. It needs to be Wednesday at 3pm. No regard for the fact that Dianne works 12 hours a day as a non-profit attorney in downtown Los Angeles. Apparently phone or email communication about this situation wouldn’t suffice either. Worse yet, Dianne was set to volunteer at 2 different offsite adoption events this weekend (1 which she arranged herself for the shelter with a PetSmart manager) and now can no longer attend. Gil Moreno is actually blocking someone who works all week at their own job from volunteering 10-15 extra hours of their weekend time in order to get his shelter’s pets adopted. Yes, that’s Gil.

So she is being dually punished: First for taking dogs out that haven’t passed their temperament tests (even though they’ve never been given one), and second for allowing me to physically be in the yard with the dog without getting a “puppy pass” for each dog that she gets out.

A puppy pass is when you go to the front desk and ask to see a specific dog, and they in turn tell you yes or no and then grant you a pass. This is done for “liability” purposes. Instead of dealing with the individual red-tape of it all, I asked Gil back when this first became an issue if I could just preemptively sign away my liability for all future dogs… I was told that I could not. I tried to then get further clarification in an attempt for a more workable solution. I sent Gil 3 emails regarding numerous outstanding issues… One on 7/2, another on 7/8 and then another on 7/16. He did not respond to any of them.

From 7/2:

“You can’t place volunteer networking holds on dogs outside of their 5-day holding period.” – Myra to Dianne today… Is this a new rule that is just now being implemented? Because both holds Dianne has place prior to this attempt have been on dogs outside of their 5-day holding period. Ruby being a prime example. And speaking of Ruby, why have you so coldly blamed Dianne for Ruby’s hold miscommunication, while “taking full responsibility” to others and putting out a letter to them in response? You haven’t even acknowledged any of this to Dianne, and she was the prime person affected by Ruby’s death. You can call me if it’s easier for you to respond that way.

From 7/8:

I’ve been waiting for a response to my last email, sent this past Tuesday, and it’s really important that there’s some clarification made on the portions of these policies that are not being consistently upheld… I understand that you are busy, and my emails are definitely not your top priority, but there are people wanting to understand these policies so that they can then try to use them for the benefits that they were supposedly created to offer. That’s important. Please let me know if I can come in at any point this week and meet with you for 10-15 minutes. I know you work during the top of the week, so just let me know what is easiest or if that would be possible or helpful… I’m actually coming in in about an hour anyways, so if today works at all give me a call on my cell phone.

From 7/16:

I’m still waiting on replies to my last 2 emails, sent on 7/2 and 7/8. Dianne’s also still awaiting some kind of a reply regarding Ruby and what happened with that. You took 10 days to do a side investigation and then came back with a snippet of info that all parties were aware of from the beginning. You’ve also ignored all else that’s been stated on the topic and even your own past words to her. Are we able to engage you or aren’t we?

Is email a good form of communication, or phone, or onsite at the shelter? I’ve asked and been ignored. Dianne sees you at the shelter but we are two different people. You’ve dodged the Ruby topic and Dianne has just been graceful about it. I have no such desire to be graceful. You killed an incredible dog this morning that was afraid of its shadow and as sweet as could be. All these dogs go down, while numerous dogs with sketchy temperaments remain. If it’s pointless to come to you to get your side or something then just let me know and I won’t bother with it. But there’s tons of questions that people have about blunt policy, easy stuff it’d seem, and you have no desire to clarify anything. This is causing confusion, which only gets more dogs killed. It would be nice if this was something you acknowledged at some point.

Since I could potentially do videos of 10 dogs in 1 day, it didn’t make sense for me to go in and congest the public lobby line further for 10 different puppy passes! A few weeks later Dianne was told that Gil apparently said that it would be okay if I got 1 puppy pass and then wrote the ID numbers of all of the dogs that I was in the yard with. This was never communicated by Gil directly to me or Dianne, but rather through another person. I didn’t take it that serious as he didn’t even take the time to let us know, plus, I’ve learned that with Gil you need to get stuff in writing. He is prone to changing something at his discretion and then blaming you for it. So we continued doing things as we were doing them. If he didn’t take 10 seconds to write Dianne or myself an email regarding this change to his puppy pass expectations then I doubt he’d of honored it anyways. We’ve learned that the hard way.

The racket of the yard play and puppy pass mess is that 90% of the dogs Dianne was taking out to the yard weren’t being temperament tested, so they were being shunned by everyone and disallowed from ever leaving their kennels. This wasn’t a situation where the shelter staff was temperament testing 98% of all dogs and Dianne was bucking the system to take out the 2% that weren’t being tested. Not at all. No Pit Bull-type dogs were voluntarily being given temperament tests, yet they can’t leave their cage without first passing one. This is extraordinarily unfair. The in-house policy that Carson has instituted is unjust, so we simply treated it as an unjust policy. Dianne was going to continue taking the time to interact with these dogs, show them love, let them play, let them run around and stretch their feet, let them put a toy in their mouth and feel like the center of attention for a few minutes. This was the right thing to do. So Gil’s first going to blame Dianne for having me back there shooting video of the dogs, trying to get them adopted. He then pulls the puppy pass stuff, trying to make the repetitious hoop-jumping unbearable. Then he allegedly just wants 1 list of all the dogs we took out. Okay… But what happens to that list? Of course he would use that list to then cross-reference the dogs Dianne took out vs. the dogs that have or haven’t been temperament tested. Dianne would then be punished for each dog that she took out that hadn’t been temperament tested and the puppy pass list would be his self-implicating proof. See how that works? Gil Moreno also targets dogs that we’ve taken video of, so as we are trying to help them he is putting an X on their back. The double-edged sword. That may sound like a bold accusation but just read through this website a little further.

Evidence of how great Dianne is out in the yard, and how great the dogs are too…

^That’s who they are suspending.

Don’t these people want to save dogs? Huh? Huh? Suspending Dianne, who is one of the most outgoing and engaging volunteers that they could ever hope to have. She promotes the hell out of dogs. She will talk to anyone and really knows how to strike a chord with each different person. That is one of her gifts. And they are shitting on it at the expense of dog’s lives! And suspending Sydney, who is an amazing volunteer that will go out of her way to be at all of the adoption events and who carries herself much like Dianne when it comes to interacting with the dogs. She takes them out and makes them feel loved and wants to do more than she is allowed to do. She is 17 years old! She makes flyers for the rabbits and snakes that come into the shelter. She takes photos of the dogs and tries hard to network them privately. She is 17 with an awesome spirit and they are trying to kill it like they kill the dogs! How dare you penalize her because you have a vendetta against other people.

Gil Moreno, you are an awful human being. Awful.