A Country Club of Strays : The sick are healed, the timid are cheered and the comparatively few deaths are merciful at Agoura center

Some people call the Los Angeles County Animal Care Center in Agoura the country club of animal shelters. The story of the panicked Labrador-mix dog may provide a clue as to why.

Taken into the shelter, the large black dog cringed at the back of his cage, terrified of anyone who approached. It looked as if it would have to be “euthanized,” the euphemism used by the nation’s shelters for killing unwanted dogs and cats.

After all, pointed out animal behavior expert Deena B. Case, “the average pet owner would just not be interested in an animal that cowers and urinates every time you come near him.”

But the Labrador got a reprieve. Case, the shelter’s volunteer animal-behavior consultant, taught a shelter employee to befriend the frightened dog: with food, by getting down on hands and knees and using a lot of “gentle, happy talk” and slow, non-threatening movements.

It took several weeks, but the dog became accustomed to people and was placed in a good home.

A Decade Old

The Agoura center, the smallest and newest of the county’s six animal shelters, opened 10 years ago this month with ambitious plans to become a model, experimental center. And by most accounts, it has fulfilled its mandate remarkably well.

This is an animal shelter that tries mightily to avoid killing its animals, even if it means giving extra attention to depressed Dobermans, taking unkempt Cairn terriers to volunteer groomers for beautifying regimens and using animal-behavior experts like Case to teach bad dogs better manners.

As a result, the shelter has one of the highest rates of any public shelter nationwide for finding homes for dogs and cats and one of the lowest rates for animal killings. It also has an excellent record of returning lost pets to their owners, said Frank Turner, district supervisor of the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, District 7, which operates the shelter.

“I’ve never heard of anyone that could beat us,” said Turner, a slow-talking, white-haired 49-year-old who has been with the shelter since it opened on a fenced, one-acre site next to the Ventura Freeway.

Turner acknowledges that his shelter handles far fewer animals than many urban shelters and is therefore able to give more individual attention to the animals it receives.

Still, the shelter gets high marks from animal-shelter experts who are familiar with an array of large and small facilities.

“With Frank, you get the feeling that he honestly cares about every animal that comes through there,” said Kathy Jenks, director of the Ventura County Animal Regulation Department, who said Ventura County’s public shelter “has suffered for years by comparison.”

Ventura County’s one public animal shelter opened last year in Camarillo with a mandate from the

Ventura County Board of Supervisors to “be as good as or better than the Agoura shelter,” Jenks said.

The Agoura shelter takes in animals only from Westlake Village, Agoura Hills, Hidden Hills, Calabasas, Topanga and Malibu. But people seeking pets come from as far as West Covina, drawn by the shelter’s reputation for clean, well-cared-for animals and considerate employees, shelter officials said.

With an annual budget of about $750,000, Turner commands a staff of 17. A veterinarian, a veterinary assistant, an animal-health technician, six kennel aides and two clerks care for the animals. A law-enforcement unit is composed of a lieutenant, an inspector who investigates complaints about inhumane treatment of animals and four animal-control officers.

The center’s facilities include a spacious barn and four buildings for administration, a clinic for spaying and neutering, a 54-cage cat kennel and a 48-cage dog kennel. It also has outdoor cages and corrals for horses, goats, birds and wild animals. Plans are afoot to raise money for a marine and wildlife center on the premises.

The kennels have heated floors, individual ventilation fans, an automatic cleaning system and a device that fills a dozen water dishes at the turn of a knob--things that are now standard in many kennels but were state-of-the-art when the kennel was built, said Betty Denny Smith, who served as director of the county Animal Care and Control Department from 1976 to 1982.

‘They Blazed the Trails’

“Agoura was the leader in all kinds of things. They blazed the trails,” Smith said.

“We’re all profiting from their experiences,” agreed Jenks. “Every success that Agoura has really trickles down to all the shelters in Los Angeles and Ventura County.”

For instance, the Agoura facility was the first public shelter in the state to vaccinate all incoming animals and to euthanize animals with injections of sodium pentobarbital rather than the then-standard air-decompression chamber, Turner said.

The chambers, which killed animals by sucking air out of windowless rooms, has since been outlawed in 25 states, said Barbara Cassiday, director of Animal Sheltering and Control with the Humane Society of the United States in Washington. The vaccinations and injections are now standard, Turner said.

Factors in the shelter’s success include the relatively small number of animals it takes in, an affluent, animal-loving population that supports it with sizable donations of time and money, and a management widely described as caring and competent.

About 20 volunteers work long hours walking dogs, cleaning cages, matching lost animals with their owners and performing myriad other chores.

For instance, Martha Muckly, a Malibu animal-lover in her 70s, goes to the shelter once or twice a week, lavishing four to five hours of attention on the dogs. Muckly said she feels guilty if she doesn’t take every single dog out to play ball and romp. She follows the exercise up with a “sweet treat,” she said.

Others voluntarily serve on an emergency animal-rescue squad that mobilizes during fires and other catastrophes to help save injured wildlife and marine animals.

Enthusiastic Crew

“I wish I had half of their volunteers and a third of their enthusiasm,” said Jenks.

When 1978’s Proposition 13 caused funding cutbacks in animal shelters, Agoura’s volunteers took up the cudgels for the shelter, said Mary Flint, executive director of Actors and Others for Animals in North Hollywood.

Volunteer groups such as that one helped pay for the pioneering euthanasia and the vaccinations until they proved cost-effective. Volunteers also helped the shelter buy such luxuries as a $10,000 ultraviolet light system to minimize the spread of disease, a large fenced-in grassy area where prospective pet owners can romp with the animals and a large cat “playroom” filled with scratching posts and baskets.

Purchased for $3,500, the playroom can hold 50 or more cats, all of them carefully screened for diseases, since one sick cat would infect a roomful, Turner said.

Three cats have been in the playroom since May, eight since June, nine since July and 10 since August. Most shelters keep cats only for days or weeks--the City of Los Angeles, for example, keeps them for a maximum of seven days, a city official said. But, Turner said, if he can hold the cats until Christmas, he can find homes for all of them.

The Agoura shelter goes to great lengths to find homes for its animals. It recently placed a toothless, 13-year-old silky terrier, an animal many shelters would have killed immediately, said Lt. Martin Broad, the shelter’s field supervisor. Sometimes shelter officials knock on 20 to 30 doors, Broad said.

“We promote our animals better,” Broad said. A series of cards on each of the dog kennels proclaiming the virtues of the animals inside proves his point. A middle-aged dog, for instance, is described as “a dog with more sense and manners than a young pup.”

Although dogs that are sick, injured, very old or have behavior problems are frequently put to sleep--often at the owner’s request--the shelter has kept dogs for as long as a year, Broad said. Turner hastened to add that such lengthy stays are extremely rare. State law requires only that animals be kept three days.

The shelter keeps separate files for lost, found, wanted and available animals, Broad said, adding, “If somebody comes through and wants, say, an old English sheepdog, and we don’t have it, we try not to let them hang up before we get their name and phone number. Maybe next week, we’ll get a whole litter of old English sheepdogs.” Shelter officials and volunteers alike are proud of the shelter’s statistics.

Between July 1, 1985 and June 30, 1986, the Agoura shelter killed only 24% of the 2,385 dogs it took in and only 20% of its 1,423 cats, according to figures provided by Turner. No animals are sold for medical research.

Such a record is “exceptional,” said Bill Kennedy, director of public affairs for the New York-based Friends of Animals.

The Humane Society of the United States estimates that, in 1982 when a survey was taken, the nation’s public and private animal shelters killed 68% of the 4.9 million dogs they took in and 62% of the 2.8 million cats.

From July 1, 1985 to June 30, 1986, the City of Los Angeles’ six animal shelters killed 61% of the 47,401 dogs taken in and 77% of the 32,934 cats, said Dyer Huston, a spokesman for the Department of Animal Regulation. No animals at the city’s shelters are sold for medical research.

During the same period, the Agoura shelter found new homes for 40% of its dogs and 64% of its cats, contrasted with Los Angeles’ six shelters, which found new homes for only 20% of their dogs and 16% of their cats. Cassiday, of the Humane Society, said public and private shelters nationwide found homes for an average of only 25% to 30% of cats and dogs.

The Agoura shelter also has a better record than the five larger Los Angeles County shelters for placing animals.

The Agoura shelter was able to return 32% of all lost dogs; the Los Angeles city shelters returned 12% of their dogs. The Agoura and Los Angeles city shelters were able to return fewer than 1% of all cats to their owners.

Turner was self-effacing about the shelter’s success. He even balked at posing for a picture, asking that his staff be photographed instead.

“It’s the volunteers and the staff,” he said. “They’re the ones that do the job.”