In the Dog House, It’s Not All Bad : Architecture: A $4.3-million shelter in Pasadena was designed to make pets feel at home--while preserving landmark buildings. Trellises, gazebos and a fountain offer the feel of a garden.

If you’ve ever visited an animal shelter to adopt a dog or cat, you’ve likely been appalled by the atmosphere.

Animal shelters are frequently dark, gloomy, smelly and enclosed, resembling miniature prisons with bleak walls and bars, as if the noisy animals inside are serving sentences for bad behavior. All too often, when people create shelters for pets that may be distressed, abused or abandoned, we tend to assume that they can’t respond to their physical environments as people do.

The new $4.3-million facility for the Pasadena Humane Society, completed last year, is an imaginative exception to this attitude. Compared to most places of its kind, the Pasadena shelter is truly humane.

The key to its humanity is the notion of an animal shelter as a garden rather than a temporary jail. Its grounds provide a green and soothing haven for unwanted or injured dogs, cats and other pets, plus the occasional distressed wild animal brought in for care.

“The concept of a shelter as a garden comes from thinking of it as an extension of the back yard of a family house,” said architect Clifton Allen, who designed the complex. “It helps the domesticated animals feel at home, reduces their feelings of stress and makes a pleasant environment for the society’s staff and visitors.”

The shelter is considered one of the best in the nation. Visitors from other humane societies across the country have come to inspect its layout. “It’s a great place,” said Fred Lee, executive director of the San Diego Humane Society. “The garden layout is really unique and I admire their community outreach programs.”

In its early days, the society combined the care of animals with that of children. Founded in 1903 as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Dumb Animals, it gave shelter to all species in need of protection. In the mid-1930s the city took responsibility for children’s services, leaving the society to care for animals.

Since the early 1930s the society has occupied a Mission Revival-style building on Raymond Avenue in a downtown district filled with workshops and factories. The 1932 building was designed by noted Pasadena architect Robert Ainsworth, with rounded archways and a red tile roof. At the rear of the property is a small garage and caretaker’s apartment designed by Myron Hunt, the architect who laid out the Caltech campus.

But by the late 1980s the society’s facilities were bursting at the seams. Dealing with more than 13,000 animals a year, it was desperately in need of expansion and renovation. The late George E. Hale, then president of the society, approached Allen when the architect was involved in creating a master plan for Caltech’s proposed campus expansion.

Hale had in mind a proposal to add buildings to house extra kennels and cages, but Allen suggested the creation of the garden. Allen’s firm, based in Hollywood, has a reputation for interesting public projects, including the new Covenant House for homeless teen-agers in Hollywood and the Air Quality Management District headquarters in Diamond Bar.

Allen’s plan preserved the original buildings, now a cultural heritage landmark, and added a wing in the same style to the north to house a spay-neuter clinic and public outreach rooms. South of the main building is a small cat ward where felines are cosseted in air-conditioned cages well away from their old nemesis, the dogs.

The garden that stretches almost the length of the site is the heart of the complex. It features open cages topped by vine-covered timber trellises. Each cage has a heated “cubby” at the back, a concrete kennel where the dogs can sleep at night protected from cold and rain. High-level mist sprays cool the air on hot summer days. Channels in the floor allow the staff to hose down the kennels to get rid of waste. A tiered fountain with a spout shaped like a cat’s head adds the calming rustle of water.

Volunteer Elaine Ng said, “The animals really are happy in this garden. Anyone considering adopting should definitely come look around here.”

In addition to its psychological advantages, the open-air garden layout reduces the spread of infections, often a problem in animal shelters. It also provides a natural form of ventilation to dissipate animal odors.

The puppy kennels, the most popular of all the society’s attractions, are in the center of the garden. They are surrounded by the adoption cages housing mature dogs and by a wild animal enclosure. At the south end of the site are boarding kennels where pet owners may accommodate their animals while they’re away.

In the midst of the kennels, filled with dogs that greet visitors with a raucous chorus of barking, are two red-tile-roofed gazebos housing offices where those who want to adopt a dog or cat are given in-depth interviews. The intention is to weed out unsuitable pet owners in advance, eliminating prospective clients like the woman who returned a dog because it didn’t match her furniture.

One of the most intimate areas is the Friendship Garden, where prospective adopters may get to know their animal companions before they take them home. This walled space epitomizes the caring way in which the society treats its guests, both human and non-human.

A two-story aviary filled with doves and quails occupies the center of the new building to the north. Wilder birds, such as a horned owl rescued as a fledgling when it fell out of its nest, are housed in separate cages. Other cages contain a variety of lost or distressed animals, including a red-tailed hawk that lost its tail feathers and a large pig captured on the 210 Freeway.

The state-of-the-art spay-neuter clinic, where 15 or more operations are performed each day, resembles a high-tech hospital. It includes an X-ray room, an isolation area for animals under treatment for infectious diseases and a grooming ward.

Every dog or cat that leaves the clinic is surgically sterilized in an effort to control the excess pet population. Some animals, however, are too sick, old, badly trained or abused to be suitable for adoption, and thousands have to be killed by lethal injection every month.

On the floor above the clinic are meeting rooms where schoolchildren and community groups can view films on animal care. The society runs dog training programs, including a “kinderpuppy” class described as a Head Start for puppies as young as 8 weeks old. “Educating the community about such matters is a vital part of our function,” said Steven McNall, the facility’s executive director. “Without it we would have a far higher incidence of pet mistreatment.”

The society has deep roots in the community. In its early days it was supported by astronomer George Ellery Hale, one of the early founders of Caltech, and this tradition was continued through his grandson, the late George E. Hale. Such strong social connections made it possible to raise the cost of building and running the new facility wholly from private donations.

Around 300 volunteers, many of them local schoolchildren, help in running the facility. It’s a touching sight to see a child hugging a distressed dog whose previous experiences with people may not have been quite so amiable.