Pets and Their People

The questions were straightforward. Does Front Street Animal Shelter provide policies and protocols to 311 on how to respond to animal-related requests?

How do 311 call agents determine if a situation is serious enough to dispatch an animal control officer?

How does 311 address urgent situations when animal control is days behind responding to requests?

There is a hidden world in Sacramento, off the grid and unknown to most. Dogs in small cages or padlocked to trees and poles. Chains tangled with little room to move. Many without food, water or shelter.

These are the dogs of homeless camps.

“You know those commercials on TV?” Debbie Tillotson says. She’s talking about the heart-wrenching public service ads that expose the underworld of animal abuse. “You can easily insert Sacramento. This is your backyard, it’s the same thing.”

The meeting was touted as a Community Participation Workshop. It was anything but.

Its purpose was to give the public an opportunity to share comments, concerns and suggestions with the Animal Care Citizens Advisory Committee, a seven-member panel that makes recommendations to the City Council regarding the Front Street Animal Shelter.

Community members who turned out to have an open discussion about the city shelter were shut down after two minutes of comments—four minutes if the committee had no follow-up.

Questions from the public went unanswered. Dialogue was zero.

Waffles was a stray when he arrived at the city’s Front Street Animal Shelter last September. The friendly 3-year-old shepherd/bull terrier mix became a shelter favorite. Volunteers called him a “belly-rub addict.”

The brown and black brindled canine was adopted Oct. 6 and returned Oct. 18; adopted again Dec. 11 and returned Dec. 15.

One day later, Waffles was euthanized.

This is about Bella and the system that failed her.

Dec. 4, a neighbor calls 311 about a dog at her apartment complex in South Natomas. The canine is left 24/7 on a small uncovered patio with no food or shelter. Storms are raging, temperatures are in the 30s.

Photos taken over the fence show a short-hair, medium-size, brown dog on a 3-by-5-foot cement patio. Her ribs protrude. She stands in her feces.

More than 100,000 adoptable dogs and cats are killed in California animal shelters each year—second only to Texas.

California has made progress. In 1998, we destroyed a half million dogs and cats annually. That year, the Hayden Act established state policy that no adoptable or treatable dog or cat can be euthanized at an animal shelter.

The killing slowed, but didn’t stop. Breeding continues. Shelters are overwhelmed.

Recognizing that we’ve fallen short, Gov. Gavin Newsom allocated $50 million in the 2020-21 state budget to make California a “no-kill” state.

The downy-feathered bird was almost lifeless, alone in the grass with no mom in sight. A small nest rested in the branches of a crepe myrtle a few feet away.

He was younger than a fledging, who would have hopped and fluttered in an attempt to fly. With no protection, the chick would not survive a roaming cat or the afternoon heat.

I returned the youngster to his nest. After an hour of waiting and watching, no mom or dad returning to the scene, I placed the chick in a box and drove to Sacramento’s Wildlife Care Association.

A dog with no microchip, no ID tag. A door left open or a hole in the fence. Someone willing to do the right thing—get the dog off the street.

Now what? Is taking the lost canine to a local animal shelter the best way to reunite him with his owner? Is that where he will be safe? Is that where his parents will look first?

Or is it better to hold onto the dog, place signs around the neighborhood, post photos on social media, walk door to door?

Phillip Zimmerman, manager of the city’s Front Street Animal Shelter, likes the second option. So much so that he has instituted a “managed intake” policy at Front Street.

My husband and I noticed something amiss when our 13-year-old chihuahua mix, Tammy, was uninterested in breakfast. She was moving slowly, not the perky wide-eyed pooch spinning in circles for a morning treat.

I called our veterinarian’s office, assuming it would be booked for the day but hoping staff could squeeze us in. They couldn’t.

I reached out to six other veterinary clinics near our home in Wilhaggin. Only one was accepting new patients, but the wait was three weeks.

Sacramentans love their dogs. With two municipal animal shelters, a state-of-the-art SPCA, 22 off-leash dog parks and dozens of mutt-friendly restaurants, Sacramento canines are living big.

California law authorizes food facilities to allow pet dogs in outdoor dining areas as long as the city or county does not pass an ordinance prohibiting the pooches, and restaurant owners do not object. There must be a separate outdoor entrance and dogs must remain on leash and off chairs.

Nestled 40 feet high in the branches of a willow tree, the great horned owl scrutinizes her surroundings. Two chicks are barely visible within the confines of their twisted twig nest.

Despite her skyward proximity and camouflage feathers, the bird of prey comes into touchable view through a spotting scope. Her home, along with 200 other bird species, is the state-owned Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area.
Stretching 16,000 acres across both sides of the Yolo Causeway along I-80 between Sacramento and Davis, the nature refuge is managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for flood control, animal and habitat protection, recreation and education.