When I ask a volunteer about Shiloh, she says he doesn’t sound familiar and is most likely at ACC. Unlike the dismal prison-like conditions just across the street at ACC, the SF/SPCA is a veritable glamour slammer, where dogs and cats are housed in sunny, glass-walled “condos” with furniture and TVs. In stark contrast to ACC, which runs on a budget of about $3 million per year, the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has one of the highest rates of public donations of any private shelter in the country, receiving over $23 million in contributions for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007, and according to the 990 (a financial report for the Internal Revenue Service that nonprofits must make available to the public upon request) for 2008, net assets were nearly $70 million. We head over to the SF/SPCA to ask about Shiloh. I look at Johnny and he rolls his eyes, knowing me too well. “And he’s going to be put down if someone doesn’t get him out of there.” “There is one named Shiloh that looks just like him at the SF/SPCA,” she informs me. A woman is standing in front with a laid-back blue nose pit bull, and I stop to say hello and tell her how beautiful her dog is. On another spring afternoon, my friend Johnny and I walk up to the Safeway on Market Street to buy a few groceries. “You’re life is going to get better from here,” Boucher tells the dog, who slinks out of her lap and back into the corner. Maggie is still stiff, her haunted eyes dark and vacant. “But get her into the system today.” Boucher nods. ” The attendant, like everyone who works at ACC, knows how passionate Boucher is, and, despite a job that could make anyone hard and jaded, they root for her and the throwaway dogs. “I have her ‘A’ number written in my book I was going to put a CIP on her yesterday, but the shelter had already closed. “You can’t put this dog down,” Boucher tells her. When the attendant appears at the cage, Boucher holds Maggie tight. Boucher rocks gently and talks to her, while Annie begins to cry. Maggie remains rigid, her head covered with scratches from burying it in the cement. They slip into the cage and sit down beside the dog, a pretty, petite gray Staffordshire terrier around a year old, whom Boucher has named Maggie Mae.ĭespite Boucher’s soft cooing, Maggie stays pressed in the corner finally, Boucher pulls the dog into her lap. According to her card, she was found in a basement where she likely spent her entire life. The attendant agrees.īoucher and Annie arrive at the kennel to see the dog exactly as she had been the day before – shut down, shivering, her head shoved in the corner as if trying to disappear. Undaunted, Boucher asks if she can spend some time with the dog before she is put down. Annie, a volunteer who has come along with Boucher, hangs her head. She explains this to the attendant, but is told it is too late – once the euthanasia is scheduled, there is no turning back. Boucher knows the dog in fact, she jotted her “A” number down – a number starting with the letter “A” that the shelter uses to track each animal – the day before, but by the time she got to the front counter to have it added to the list of CIP holds for Rocket Dog, the shelter was closed. “The little grey pit bull,” the attendant answers. On this particular day, Boucher notices that one of the dogs she had marked CIP is not in his cage she stops a kennel attendant to ask her to help find the dog, but the attendant says it will have to wait – she needs to euthanize a dog first.
Boucher makes it her mission to give these animals a chance – she marks their cards with “CIP,” short for “call interested party,” so they won’t be euthanized while she searches for foster homes, and she gives the mostly nameless dogs names, scribbling them on the card that describes how each dog wound up here: “Owner didn’t want anymore,” “Picked up as stray,” “Family couldn’t afford.” There is a surprisingly wide array of breeds, from all-American mutts to purebred Dachshunds, Dobermans and Jack Russell terriers. These are society’s throwaways – surrendered by their owners or picked up as strays the dogs the public doesn’t see.
#Sf pitbull rsscue full
The dank rooms full of cement and chain-link smell of feces, and the endless barking of anxious, frightened dogs is deafening.
N a spring afternoon, Rocket Dog Rescue founder Pali Boucher makes one of her almost-daily trips through the “stray and surrender” kennels at San Francisco’s city-run shelter, Animal Care and Control.