For an indefinite period, the shelter at Long Beach Animal Care Services will close to the public. Nonsymptomatic volunteers and staff will socialize the pets and clean the kennels, and only pets who are sick, injured or in immediate danger will be allowed to enter.
The all-volunteer Seal Beach Animal Care Center is also closed to the public until further notice. They’re handling adoptions via their website and are limiting access to include volunteers.
Director Staycee Dains said that the shelter is following directives from the National Animal Care & Control Association (NACA), a standard-setting organization for animal-welfare and control departments and organizations. NACA’S recommendations and publications reflect an awareness of the continuously changing conditions and uncertainty, but at this time at least, euthanasia as a means to emptying shelters is strongly discouraged. Fostering or adoption is the recommended route.
The constantly changing situations and effects of the virus, health-related and social, are steering shelters across the country to prepare for a possible decrease in shelter personnel and volunteers to the point of not being able to effectively provide care for the animals. According to NACA, “animal control agencies should take active measures to reduce nonessential shelter intake. Measures taken should include returning pets in the field instead of impounding them, suspending non-emergency owner surrender intake and encouraging owners who are ill to keep their pets at home whenever possible.”
Dains said that shelter staff will provide counseling and resources to anyone who finds an animal who appears healthy. The first thing anyone should do in any circumstance before surrendering or deciding to keep an animal is to scan them for a microchip. Because the shelter is closed to the public, this isn’t possible. Many veterinarians are now only taking emergency cases and not doing routine exams or vaccinations, but they might agree to come curbside with their scanner.
Long Beach Animal Hospital (3816 E. Anaheim St.) will be carrying on their usual operations and said that they’d come out to scan for a chip.
If the animal doesn’t have a chip, the following resources were suggested by Dains, and the public, to find a foster: Hub.lbpost.com, Nextdoor Lakewood and Long Beach Lost and Found Pets Facebook page, PetHarbor.com, PawBoost alerts, Craigslist.
Posting flyers in the neighborhood is an old-school method that still works. Be sure to collect the flyers if and when the pet’s home is located. If you believe that your buddy is holed up in the shelter, check the shelter’s Lost and Found page. If you find a matching photo, send an email to [email protected] with the subject “Reunite,” a photo that you took of your pet, and the ID number on the Lost and Found page. This is also a good resource for found pets—attach a photo of the pet, where you found them and your information.
If you live outside the Long Beach shelter’s service area (Long Beach, Seal Beach, Cerritos, Los Alamitos, Signal Hill), contact your area’s shelter for resources.
“If there was ever a situation where social media came in useful, this is it,” said Dains who implores the public to be especially mindful of bringing in newborn kittens. Organizations and individuals involved in trap/spay/neuter have always directed well-meaning people to watch to make sure the mother cat isn’t out for a few hours hunting for food for the family. Surely we can all relate at this point.
Adoption and fostering will help keep animals safe
Dains supports NACA’s immediate objective of emptying the shelter of pets as quickly as possible because of the uncertainty of the future. Long Beach’s animal community is, as always, stepping up.
Adoptions through the shelter will continue through appointment only, but fostering is a far more immediate way to achieve the goal. Live Love Animal Rescue, which spearheads the Foster the Fourth efforts each year, took only a few days to render vacant 70% of Animal Care Services’ dog kennels with its Emergency Temporary Shelter foster dog program. They still need fosters for big dogs; email [email protected].
https://www.facebook.com/LiveLovePets/videos/248636849499983/?t=14
Video courtesy of Live Love Animal Rescue
Community members can foster cats through Safe-Purr at Home (cat puns rule), a partnership between the shelter and the Little Lion Foundation. Contact [email protected]. You can also sponsor a shelter cat by contacting Little Lion.
https://www.facebook.com/thelittlelionfoundation/videos/157730892067011/?t=41
Video courtesy of The Little Lion Foundation.
Running with the L.A. County mayoral triumvirate’s emergency order, pets will be safer at home, too. And according to former shelter adoption-team member Jill Prout, you’ll be happy at home with one. Or more.
https://vimeo.com/399314468