CITYSCAPES / PENELOPE McMILLAN : Animals Given Up by Owners Do Not Always Find Shelter

A tiny Chihuahua shivered in the woman’s arms as she stood in line at the city of Los Angeles’ East Valley Shelter in North Hollywood.

“I can’t keep him,” Rhonda Todd was saying. “But he’d be a great dog for someone else.”

“This is not a stray? You’re the owner?” asked the stone-faced clerk behind the counter.

When the 27-year-old administrative assistant nodded, the clerk declared: “If you leave it here, it’ll be put down in an hour.”

Todd stared in shock, tears welling in her eyes. “No!” she cried as words came out in a rush: “My landlord says I can’t keep a dog. I saved his life. He needs a home. He has all his shots. He’s so loving . . . “

“You’re the owner,” the clerk said, cutting Todd off. “We’ll put him down in an hour.”

According to policy set down by those running the city’s Department of Animal Regulation, stray animals have priority at its six shelters. Space determines how long a pet turned in by the owner will live. When there is a shortage, spokesman Robert Pena said, “owners’ animals are the first ones destroyed.”

The department seems to take a literal reading of the Municipal Code, which requires city shelters to hold stray animals at least three days. The department actually gives strays up to seven days, Pena said, to give owners time to claim them.

Because the code does not say anything about pets that owners voluntarily relinquish, the city shelters keep them only when there are enough cages, Pena said. “Unfortunately, we have so many stray animals,” he added.

Space is a precious commodity at the city’s shelters, where 91,861 animals were impounded in the last year. Of those, Pena said 27,392 dogs, cats, mice and birds were turned in by their owners. The department had no record of how many pets brought in by owners were among the 63,211 animals destroyed in the same period.

Some believe that the problem is getting worse. Animal rescue volunteers said more owners have been giving up their pets because of the recession.

Jeanne-Marie Korn, president of the nonprofit Amanda Foundation, said a recent caller asked for help placing a golden retriever found tied to a telephone pole in the Hollywood Hills. “The dog was standing in the pouring rain,” she said, “with a sign on him reading: ‘My owner can’t feed me anymore. Can you help?’ ”

People forced to give up their animals--because of the recession, because they are moving away or like Todd, because of their landlords--find the city’s policy coldhearted.

“I’ve got to give Scooter up, only to find he’s got an hour to live? That’s devastating,” Todd said.

The city’s policy is not the norm in Los Angeles County. At shelters run by Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or the city of Burbank, owners’ animals are accepted equally and placed up for adoption along with strays. Spokespersons say pets and strays are kept as long as space permits.

Owners’ pets are more adoptable, said LASPCA Director Edward Cubrda, because “we know something about them. With an owner-relinquished dog at least you’ve got some history, you can find out its behavior--whether it’s friendly to children, for example. With a stray you don’t know anything.”

The city’s policy, like all others regarding animal regulation, is set by the bureaucrats who run the department--a situation that may change if a ballot measure passes this April. The measure, authored by Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, would give policy-making power to the Animal Regulation Commission. Those running the department would have to abide by the rules set down by citizen commissioners, similar to the police or recreation and parks departments.

“If I were setting policy, I would give previously owned and loved dogs the same chance at a future as a stray,” said Galanter, who once adopted a dog, which had been rescued, from a shelter.

The ballot measure is an outgrowth of controversy surrounding the department in recent months. Last year, longtime General Manager Robert I. Rush retired amid mounting criticism over shelter conditions and the abrupt way department employees treated the public.

Todd had found her little tan dog as a puppy, lying cut up and bloodied on the front porch of her mother’s La Crescenta home. They never found out how he had been hurt or how he had gotten there. The landlord agreed to let them keep Scooter until the dog was well, but then one week turned into six months. “We were kind of ignoring it, hoping he’d forget,” Todd said. Finally, Scooter had to go.

Todd’s dog did not die at the city shelter. Her predicament was inadvertently witnessed by a reporter who offered to find Scooter a home. More than 30 people quickly responded to an advertisement, several saying that they wanted to replace dogs that had died or were lost.

One was Rachel Castaneda, 24, of Van Nuys who said her roommate had moved out and taken his dog. “I really missed that dog,” Castaneda said. From the list, Todd picked her, and the computer operator soon reported that she was thrilled with her new pet.

“We’re buddies,” she said. “I’m glad he came along--and I came along. He deserves a chance.”

Todd said: “If the city had kept him, somebody would have adopted him.”

The city might have even made a little money. Owners who buy dogs such as Scooter at a city shelter, Pena said, pay $63.16.