Success Is a Dilemma : ‘Pro-Life’ Animal Shelter Finds Business Too Good

Volunteers at this town’s animal shelter arrived recently to find a dog tied to the front fence.

She was a young German shepherd, a beautiful, well-groomed animal named Silber. Attached were two pages of instructions noting that she liked homemade soup and needed to be walked every day.

The find prompted one volunteer to place an angry ad in a local newspaper. “Not only are you cowardly,” the ad fumed at the unknown dog owner, “but (by abandoning your pet) you committed a criminal offense punishable by a $500 fine and possible jail time. Did you think you were dropping her off at an exclusive Doggie Camp?”

Yet the shelter took Silber in and, within two weeks, found her a new home. That happy ending is common at the Seal Beach Animal Care Center, one of only two self-styled “pro-life” shelters in Orange County. Unlike most shelters, said Maryanne Dell, chairwoman of the nonprofit center’s board of directors, “we don’t put them to sleep” unless they are too sick to be cured or too dangerous to be reformed.

That approach has caused some problems, however. According to Del Holbrook, the city’s animal control officer, as many as 70% of the stray dogs and cats picked up in Seal Beach are left there by owners from nearby cities unwilling to relegate the fates of their animals to city or county shelters, where unclaimed pets are often destroyed within a short time.

One result has been a dramatic increase in admissions to the Seal Beach facility. Four years ago, the 1,200-square-foot shelter--built to accommodate 12 dogs and 12 cats--was averaging about 11 animals a day, according to Dell. Today, she said, the daily average has risen to 50, with the census sometimes reaching as high as 88, including an occasional rabbit, guinea pig, snake, tortoise, hamster, sea gull, fox or wolf.

Finding space for the abandoned animals “is a constant battle,” Dell said. “We are constantly overcrowded.”

This week the shelter launched a fund-raising campaign aimed at paying for expansion plans that would nearly double its capacity. A pet fair held Sunday, according to Dell, netted about $750 toward an eventual goal of $24,000.

“With the bad economy and natural disasters,” she said, “we are unfortunately going to see more and more abandonment. It’s not going down; it’s consistently going up.”

It was to help deal with that problem--as well as the frequent runaways--that the shelter was founded in 1988. Concerned by what members perceived as inadequate treatment of animals at the hands of the county, a group of residents opened the shelter. Among other things, Dell said, they were opposed to the county’s policy of destroying unclaimed animals after three to 10 days.

Today, the city has a contract with the Seal Beach Animal Care Center to take care of its stray animal population. And instead of putting them to sleep, shelter volunteers care for them--sometimes for as long as two years--until new homes can be found.

Supported largely by fund-raisers and contributions, the shelter operates on an annual budget of about $70,000, much of it spent on veterinary care for its animal occupants.

Officials in Mission Viejo voted recently to build a shelter in their city based on the same principles. And at the county’s only other so-called pro-life shelter--in San Clemente--more than 800 animals a year are saved by the facility’s commitment to finding them homes. “Euthanasia is not an option here,” said Gene Begnell, support services chief for the city’s Fire Department, which oversees the San Clemente shelter.

That same attitude seems to be a source of pride for many animal-loving residents in Seal Beach, who file in and out of the shelter all day.

“I think it’s great,” said Maria Barrow, 24, a self-described animal rights activist who had come to borrow a cage for the rabbit she had adopted a week earlier. “They provide a home for animals that otherwise would be in the streets. They are very caring people.”

Gene Curtis, 39, and his two children, meanwhile, sat patiently beneath a Cinzano umbrella waiting to take home the kitten they had just picked out.

“We want a little cuddly thing,” Ryan Curtis, 11, said.

His sister, Jenny, 14, couldn’t agree more. “I like this place,” she said amid a chorus of barks. “It’s sad when they put animals to sleep.”