To the editor: Sadly, this generous grant from Best Friends and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has zero chance of making a lasting change (“Animal welfare groups commit $14 million to improve L.A. animal shelters,” April 20). Using $14 million to add 23 more employees to L.A Animal Services will just have more people bailing water from our city shelters’ sinking ship.
How to bring about real change? Direct that $14 million instead to spay and neuter programs. Open some free or affordable high-volume spay and neuter clinics around the city, mostly in low-income neighborhoods. Focus on pitbulls and other large dogs (the ones most likely to be warehoused and euthanized at the shelters), as well as cats. Recruit, and use the money to pay, high-volume veterinarians. Then, finally start enforcing our spay/neuter laws.
That is how to stop the cycle of too many births that inevitably leads to more impounds, cruel animal warehousing and euthanasia at L.A. shelters.
Please wake up and smell the desperate spay/neuter need, Best Friends and ASPCA. Your $14 million could make genuine, dramatic and lasting improvement if directed to spaying and neutering. If the money’s used to buy a small percentage of additional employees for a few years, then it might as well be incinerated along with the never-ending remains of L.A. Animal Services’ dead dogs and cats.
Louise A. Oshiro, Los Angeles