Life in an animal shelter for dogs and cats and other creatures that have the misfortune to end up there is never great. They can languish for months, waiting to be adopted out to what animal advocates hope will be a “forever home.” Or worse, they can end up killed — or as shelter officials prefer to call it, “euthanized.”

Los Angeles Animal Services, the city department that runs six shelters, has grappled over the years with high intake of stray animals and lost pets as it also has publicized the need for spaying and neutering pets and provided owners with some financial assistance for those procedures. It is one of the largest shelter systems in the country and shamefully underfunded, according to advocates and rescuers and some elected city officials.

Since 2021, the number of animals taken into shelters has been climbing and so has the euthanasia rate. But this year has seen an alarming rise in the killing of animals even as they were wedged into every nook and cranny to keep them alive.

Volunteers, rescuers, animal advocates and a consultant hired by the department have told stories of woeful overcrowding in shelters and severe understaffing this past year. In some shelters, they say, less than a handful of employees must feed hundreds of dogs and clean their kennels. Workers hose down the kennels — often without using disinfectant, observers say, or removing feces on the floors. Dogs still inside were often splattered with water. When kennels were full, dogs sat in crates in the hallways.

From January to September 2023, 12,901 dogs were taken into the system, and 710 were euthanized. During the same nine-month period in 2024, 15,083 dogs were taken in and 1,224 were euthanized. That is a 72% increase in dogs killed, even though the intake rose only 17%.

Grim as the situation is, the vast majority of dogs and cats survive in shelters from one year to the next and make it out alive. Overall, the percentage of dogs, cats and kittens (the numbers of which swell the shelters) that get out of the shelters this year will undoubtedly be below the 90% save rate. That is the threshold of a “no kill” shelter system, in which animals are killed only because they are severely ill or dangerous or so erratic in behavior that they will never get adopted out.

More than 28,700 dogs, cats and kittens this year had gotten out of the shelters as of the end of October. A total of 36,617 were taken in. So far the save rate for those animals collectively is about 85%. The save rate for dogs alone to date this year is 91%.

But no matter how you calculate it, hundreds of animals are suffering in shelters. A no-kill policy is a righteous goal, but saving animals from death should not mean subjecting them to a house of horrors inside the shelters.

There are ways to fix this. Some changes are already in the works, city officials say. Management has changed, and the department has set up a Shelter Support Collaborative of animal welfare, veterinary and rescue organizations to help steer the troubled system. Some have already helped make changes at the Chesterfield Square shelter in South L.A., the city’s largest.

All these moves are promising, but more urgent action is needed. The longer animals linger in shelters, the more stressed they can become, making them less appealing to adopters. Cats also get ill from the stress, say advocates. The department needs to continue to rely on the indefatigable volunteers who help with walking dogs and many chores. It also needs to expand collaboration with the rescue groups that pull animals from shelters, reducing the population.

Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare organization, offered the city a $9-million grant over three years to fund and train vital new staff positions, but the group pulled its offer after the city took weeks deciding whether to accept. Now city officials say they are talking with Best Friends about a possible plan.

That’s smart.

The department needs staff who can counsel prospective adopters, instead of the current situation: “When someone comes into the shelter, they are told ‘dogs this way, cats that way,’” says Brittany Thorn, executive director of Best Friends L.A. For example, shelters have a lot of large dogs that are harder to adopt out. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Large dogs vary in personality and can fit with different people’s lifestyles, if shelters have enough staff to get to know the animals and make recommendations.

The shelter system also needs staff trained and assigned to do intervention with people who show up to surrender their pets. They could be facing eviction or a landlord in a new apartment who won’t take pets. (In the city of L.A., only housing that has public financing must allow tenants to have pets.) Or they may not be able to afford to feed their pet or treat a medical condition. But if people want to keep their pets, the goal should be to help them do so. Some of the shelters have food pantries; this is the kind of aid that, if expanded, could reduce the intake rate and ease pressure on the shelters.

Animal advocates have said for years that we cannot adopt our way out of a shelter crisis. More people need to spay or neuter their pets to avoid unwanted puppies and kittens. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who sits on the council’s committee that weighs in on Animal Services, says the value of city vouchers for those surgeries — available to lower-income pet owners — should be increased so that more veterinarians will agree to take them.

Angelenos who want a dog or cat also need to be reminded that adopting from shelters or rescue networks is often a better option than buying from a breeder. Animal Services can help by getting animals out of the shelters more often and into adoption events in communities where people can meet the dogs and cats.

When more animals can find their forever homes and when more people have the support to care for their pets instead of surrendering them, the whole city will be better off — the humans, the canines and the felines.

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