A gift registry for the four-legged set
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I’ll be visiting the North Central Animal Shelter three times this week. The first time was last Sunday when I brought in two Rottweilers I found running loose in the street. They’re the sweetest, slobberiest pair you could ever know, and I’m still cleaning off my car windows from the evidence of their affection.
The second time, I went to check on how they were doing, and whether an owner had shown up to take them home. Answer -- as it is so often -- no. As I was waiting to see them, a kind mother and son brought in two dogs they’d rescued from the middle of Figueroa.
They were big and fluffy Samoyed mixes, real sweethearts who look like big white lambs. Something was wrong with their ears, which were crusted with blood. And the older of the two had hair so matted that it was like layers of felt packing pads. It turns out, so I was told, that the shelter didn’t have the necessary equipment to shave his mats and doggie dreadlocks thoroughly.
I can’t say that I’m surprised, with the city’s budget morass and more than 700 city jobs set to be eliminated. But as my colleague Carla Hall reported, the city was able to move more than 700 people around from department to department to plug holes in other jobs even as theirs were ‘disappeared.’
Only at Animal Services would people actually be fired, because where else in City Hall could you find work for people with skills at handling animals? [I know, I thought of that too, but the City Council wouldn’t find it as funny as we do.]
So here’s the reason for my third visit this week to North Central: I bought heavy-duty pet clippers and I’m donating them to the shelter. And here’s where I got my Big Idea. What do people do when they need stuff they can’t afford -- say, when they’re getting married or having a baby? They register for gifts!
Someone should create a private Animal Services support group with a website -- like the groups that raises money for the zoo or for Chief Bill Bratton’s police projects. There’s the S.T.A.R. program that the city has to fund surgery and medicine for sick and injured critters in city shelters.
The group in question can ask the shelters what they need and craft a ‘wish list’ website like a bridal gift registry, so Angelenos can choose to donate what they see on the ‘wish list,’ things that cost a few bucks, or a few hundred.
South Central needs soft pet beds for kitties? Someone will say, ‘I can donate that!’ and click and give. East Valley needs new water and food bowls on raised stands, so arthritic big dogs don’t have to hurt their necks and shoulders bending low to eat and drink? A fourth-grade class from a nearby school decides to raise the money to buy them.
Will someone please, please run with this idea? Set up the ‘Love LA Pets’ gift registry website, where the city’s animal shelters can list their needs and Angelenos can go online to give them those things.
Ordinarily I do not like the idea of volunteers having to step in and do the work that is properly government’s work, and I wouldn’t want the city to use this idea to wash its hands of its own responsibilities to the city’s voiceless animal residents.
But there is cage upon cage of needful, lonely critters in our shelters, and, I am sure, a lot of people in this city of multiple millions who would be delighted to help -- all they need is a civic matchmaker to show them how.
-- Patt Morrison
Patt Morrison’s column appears every Thursday in The Times.
