I have an update to the Best Friends post from Monday but decided to post it on its own in the interest of transparency, in order to make it as visible as possible to anyone interested. Jon Dunn from BFAS answered the questions I had previously sent to 3 different BFAS e-mail addresses on 2 separate occasions. The e-mail response is pasted below, in full, with my questions in regular type and the responses in italics.
My takeaways:
- BFAS has taken 10-15 animals a week to the East Valley facility since taking over at Mission Hills in January 2012. If I estimate 12.5 pets per week for 20 months (80 weeks), that works out to about 1000 pets that BFAS has brought to the pound.
- BFAS does not keep track of what happens to these animals.
- BFAS does not perform documentation or networking of any pet taken to the pound in order to help get the pet reunited with his owner (if there is one) or get seen by rescues and adopters.
- BFAS sometimes places a hold on pets they take to the pound but since they don’t keep track, they can’t say how many.
- Regarding the animals BFAS has pulled from the city shelter, BFAS does not pay fees to the city for these animals. BFAS neuters and chips these animals themselves. Some of these pulled pets have been transported to states other than CA.
- My question, “What has happened to these pulled pets?” does not appear to have been specifically answered. My reason for asking was to determine how many of the pulled pets may have been adopted, sent to other rescues, returned to the pound, or any other possible outcome.
Jon Dunn’s e-mail response, in full:
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Re: Grandpa – BFAS LA
From: Jon Dunn
Date: Tue, September 10, 2013 11:18 am
To: Shirley Thistlethwaite <eiderdown@yesbiscuit.com>How many animals has BFAS taken to the East Valley facility since taking over at Mission Hills?
10-15 animals a week are usually brought in either as strays or owner surrenders to the Mission Hills Center. As you have likely already read elsewhere, it is illegal for us to accept animals from the public either as strays or owner surrenders (per the contract we have with the city of LA, all animals at the Mission Hills Center must come from one of the 6 LA Animal Services shelters). The animals must go to the East Valley shelter where they are held for their required hold times (dependent on microchip, etc.). It is important to note that these animals are never considered as “intake” by Best Friends.
What has happened to each of the animals taken to the city pound by BFAS?
We do not track the outcome of every animal that falls into this category. In some cases, we do put a hold and pull the animal ourselves. In other cases where we see an animal has a particular need served by one of the 65 NKLA coalition members (to whom we pay adoption subsidies), we notify that particular group. In others, one of the 190 LAAS New Hope Partners steps in and pulls the dog (as what happened with Grandpa). Best Friends is a large cog, but certainly not the only cog in the Los Angeles animal welfare system. We are thankful to the other organizations, many of whom we work with very closely, who are also working hard each and every day to contribute to the fantastic drop in shelter killing we’ve seen in LA the last two years.
When taking an animal to the city pound, does BFAS always perform documentation and networking of the pet in order to help get the pet reunited with his owner (if there is one) or get seen by rescues and adopters?
No, as we said above, the animals we re-direct to the East Valley shelter are of indeterminate status and must be held by law for the required hold period. They are never considered Best Friends animals. The hold time / owner reclamation process is wholly owned by the LAAS. Rescue work is full of tough decisions, and Best Friends and other rescues and shelters face them every day. The five million dollars committed to Los Angeles is a lot, but it is not infinite, and as such, we must make decisions on where to put our time and resources.
When taking an animal to the city pound, does BFAS always place a “hold” on the pet so that, if the animal goes unclaimed/unadopted and ends up on the kill list at the pound, BFAS will be notified to pick up the pet?
Not always. We place holds based on the same factors and pet profiles that we employ in pulling animals from the city shelters for the Mission Hills Adoption Center. We take old dogs, young dogs, black dogs, white dogs, “bad” dogs, cute, silly and all breeds including pit bulls and Chihuahuas and everything in between. We try to maintain a mix that reflects the shelter population, so we have around 50% pit bulls at any given time. That also goes for seniors and medical cases. We have a limited number of kennels/cages allotted to medical cases. Since there are always medical cases at the shelters those medical slots are usually full. We welcome anyone to come visit the Mission Hills Center and see the pets for yourself! Of course, our goal is to save as many lives as possible, and to do that right now it means moving animals out of LAAS shelters at the fastest rate possible and placing them in new homes as quickly as possible. It should be noted that in a system as large as LA Animal Services, we do not receive preferential treatment to get “first pick.” We are allowed to place holds at the same time as the rest of the groups.
How many pets has BFAS brought to the city pound and then later rescued via the previously described process?
We don’t track that particular statistic, but since taking over the Mission Hills center, we have pulled 7,075 animals from LAAS shelters. 3,149 animals in 2012, and 3,926 through the end of August 2013. All of the animals in our Mission Hills center are pulled from LAAS shelters.
Regarding the animals BFAS has pulled from the city shelter, what fee has BFAS paid to the city per animal? What has happened to these pulled pets? Have any of them been transported to rescues or adopters in states other than CA?
When we pull animals from LAAS, we do the spay/neuter surgery, and microchip the pets. The $45.50 fee New Hope Partners pay to pull, covers those same services performed by LAAS. So the city waives the fee and the associated services. Since we pull so many shelter animals at a time it would clog the system for the city to provide those services for Best Friends. Also, the operational costs of the Mission Hills Center fall entirely on us. Those costs, and our other operational expenses in LA exceed five million dollars a year. That’s a tremendous amount of value to the city, far beyond the $318,000 in New Hope fees (7,000 animals at $45.50) they have waived since the beginning of 2012.
We do offer a transport program for LA pets, known as Pup My Ride. So far in 2013, 2,011 animals have been taken to other areas. Roughly half of those pets came from LAAS, the rest were pulled from LA County shelters and other local shelters.