Pasadena Humane Claims 94.38% Placement For Cats Even Though it killed 59%

Pasadena Humane is a typical "lying" shelter.

PH claims a “Placement rate for cats” of 94.38% on page 5 of their 2008 report. http://www.pasadenahumane.org/site/DocServer/PHS_Annual_2008.pdf?docID=361

This is an astounding claim since they took in 3,741 cats and killed 2,194 of them! Only 1,547 cats left the shelter alive! They killed 58.6% of all cats that came in yet astoundingly claim a placement rate for cats of over 94%.

Their kill figures are a little worse than LA City but not quite as bad as County where about 80% are killed.

So how do they get their 94.38% placement rate figure? They claim that of the 3,741 cats impounded, only 1,639 were “placeable," and of these 1,639, only 92 were killed for lack of space.

“In 2008, PHS cared for 1,639 placeable cats. Of these, 1,326 cats were adopted, 205 went to rescue organizations, and 16 were transferred to other shelters. 92 cats were euthanized for space reasons, 7 more than in 2007. Our placement rate for cats is 94.38%, down 0.22 % from 2007.”

They get their “fantastic” placement rate by defining the population of cats they adopted, transferred or had rescued as the placeable ones. It is purely a name game with them. Marcia Mayeda used to do the same, claiming an almost 89% adoption rate even though County killed 82% of the cats impounded.

They just defined the group of placeable or adoptable cats as being slightly greater than the total number of cats they actually adopted. Actually, if you are a really good liar, you can generate numbers where you saved or placed more animals than were placeable. You could even create a 110% placement figure while still killing more than half the cats brought in.

Compare Pasadena’s stats with Reno for example, where the live save rate for cats is over 80%, not 41% as in Pasadena.

The case with dogs is only a tiny bit better. Of 4,288 impounded dogs, 1974 made it out alive in 2008 according to their report. That is a live save rate of 46%. Yet, they claimed a 97.6% placement rate for dogs, because they only considered 2,024 of the nearly 4,300 dogs placeable.

This is far, far worse than Los Angeles Animal Services with a live save rate of 74% compared to Pasadena's 46%. I think even LA County has a better than 46% live save rate. Reno has a live save rate for dogs of over 90% and they handle more than twice as many cats and dogs as Pasadena.

There is one very unusual statistic. Pasadena claims 3,741 "live animal" impounds for cats out of a total cat impound figure of 4,760. They list 1,019 deceased cats also impounded. This is extrememly high compared to Los Angeles. Los angeles, for the same period had only 556 DOA cats, and yet LA impounded almost five times as many cats. That is, dead cats impounded was only 2% of LA's impounds, but was 21% of Pasadena's. It could be that Pasadena counts every dead cat impounded while LA doesn't, which is troubling if true, because in LA, once again we are missing an important piece of information regarding animals in the city.

Given the photos of the thrown away items, the lack of official response to the claims of not having over 300 evacuated animals, along with this blatant slanting of statistics beyond recognition, and you have an organization I certainly would not trust regarding anything.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is sinful! What lying! I'm amazed they are worse than LA City. They tout themselves as being "nokill." I thought they were at least better than LA City. A small well funded shelter with hundreds of volunteers can't do better than that? They are total frauds.

I hear their main employees make a lot of money.

Anonymous said...

I just went to Guidestar.com They made $6.4M in 2007, half in donations, half for doing animal control for different cities. In 2006 $7.7M, in 2005 4.8M. Steven McNall is the only board member who makes anything. The rest get zero. He gts $137K. They spend $86K a year on the behavioral dept. Most of the money brought in goes to overhead, not the animals. They also make money boarding people's dogs.

Anonymous said...

$86K spent on the behavior department while 6% of the cats and 12% of the dogs they deem suitable for placement (and are placed) wind up being returned.

Anonymous said...

I know this to be true. They are frauds and they kill fiv+ and felv+ ferals at their clinics and do not give the caretakers a chance to save them, and those tests are not 100% either. Avoid at all cost.

Anonymous said...

Isn't it strange. A passing rescuer takes photos of non-money donations being thrown away and gets pictoral evidence that the number of animals evacuated far exceeds what they say it is.

Once you notice irregularities like this, you start to dig deeper. And what do you find? A diseased shelter.

I am sure those claims as to the number of volunteers is excessive. I wonder if Ed shouldn't do a public record request for any paper trail as to how many animals were evacuated to them.

Anonymous said...

The place where I volunteer pulled a dog from Pasadena. This is a small, extremely well-behaved, very charming dog - and they gave her twenty days to live from impound. At first when we called we thought we must have the wrong dog off their website because we couldn't believe they'd given her so little time. Not only was she small, she gets along fine with other dogs, and there's NO WAY they didn't have space for her for at least another week or two. But no, they said, we'd better come get her immediately, if we wanted to make sure she made it.

When talking to new volunteers about how dogs come to our shelter I use her as an example of how harsh things are out there for dogs in city shelters. People are uniformly shocked, and many tell me that they assumed that a "Humane Society" would be no-kill. But Pasadena told me they are contracted with six different cities, and no shelter that has city contracts is going to be no-kill.

They also make money letting American Humane Association hold classes there. Fun fact: I attended a two-day Basic Animal Emergency Services class there last year. Also in attendance was Derek Brown, who L.A. County Animal Care and Control lists in their directory as Deputy Director of Operations. Prior to that he was at LAAS and was Captain at West L.A. (and not a guy known for his people skills or smarts). He was Captain at a L.A. City Shelter, and is now a Deputy Director at County, and he was taking a "Basic" Animal Emergency services course in 2008. A guy who had leadership positions in two major Animal Control departments in a county known for earthquakes, fires, mudslides, etc. - and he was just taking the BASIC course on how to deal with emergencies. He also didn't bother to stay for the full course on day one, and if he showed up at all on day two he was long gone before lunch. He thought he was going to have staffers like Danny Ubario cover for him, but the American Humane training staff who were handing out certificates at the end of day two were visibly flummoxed when they learned he'd just split without a word to them.

I wonder if Captain Derek Brown is hanging a certificate in his office showing that he "completed" a Basic Animal Emergency Services course last year...

Anonymous said...

I took the American Humane euthanasia class at Pasadena shelter. There were people there from county, city. For our final we had to kill three dogs. The dogs would be killed no matter what we were told. They were three pitbulls who had supposedly failed their behavioral test. They were deemed "unadoptable." One was scared and I thought if someone pushed him, he might nip, a very small pitbull mix. Another was just plain scared, probably never would have nipped anyone. The third was the sweetest dog in the world kissing every person in the room, tail at full wag all the time. She was deemed "food aggressive." Before we killed her we gave her a muffin, then snatched it away. She just kissed our hands and wagged her tail. Even though they deemed her "unadoptable" because she was "food aggressive," she was on the adoption floor for 30 days with no takers. If the animal were indeed "dangerous," why did they offer her up for adoption? Because she was not dangerous. It was all just a ploy, a ruse to deem a dog "unadoptable" so you can kill it and not have to count it. Just about every person in the room was crying when we killed that dog.

Anonymous said...

Holy Jesus #7.

That story is so awful. To think they do that.

But, as weird as it sounds, thanks for having the guts to say "kill." It's never going to change if we can't admit the truth.

Anonymous said...

"It was all just a ploy, a ruse to deem a dog "unadoptable" so you can kill it and not have to count it. Just about every person in the room was crying when we killed that dog."

Many so called no kill shelters do this, also lumping shy and feral cats into the "unhealthy and untreatable" category so they don't count either.

Anonymous said...

Fortunately, at least in their annual report, they don't call themselves no kill. Just 95% successful at not killing too much more than half the animals.

Anonymous said...

did it ever dawn on any of you that the public may have seen some crates near the dumpster and started putting their donations there rather than stop and drop off at the shelter? Just like when you put your hand me downs near the sidewalk in hopes of it getting picked up before trash time.

Why do it? said...

Why would you even enroll in a euthanasia class where you have to kill innocent animals #7?

I'll bet you'll never forget this experience for as long as you live.

Anonymous said...

It was a requirement for licensing as a rehabber.

Anonymous said...

Bull shit! You suck! Why would you even concider a class like that..no kill should be abolished!


Anonymous said...

Bull Shit! You suck! Why would you concider such an occupation? No Kill is so much better..

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Unknown said...

All of you people getting mad at the euthaniasia. Don't blame the sweet good souls that have the biggest heart there is. Blame the greeders.....um breeders who use animals like ATMs, and then use the local shelters as a disposal system.