Data on Lake Forest Animals at the County Shelter

For the past few months I have been working with our staff and the County to develop a data reporting system useful for the City. It’s now live on the city’s website (Click Here). Looking at the data from the County through May 31, 2017 here are some observations –

ADMISSIONS

• 166 animals entered the shelter. That’s an average of 33 per month, or about 1 per day.
• The most common reason for entering was “other” which refers to bites, cruelty investigations, and disaster related impounds. This was 83 of 166 or 50%. In addition 52 strays entered and 22 pets were relinquished by owner.

OUTCOME

• 38 were returned to owner, 32 were adopted, 32 were euthanized by the shelter staff, 23 were transferred to another agency, 10 were transferred to a rescue group, 9 were returned to the wild, 7 were euthanized at the request of the owner, 4 died while there, 1 was lost, and 1 went to foster care.

EUTHANIZED

• 39 animals were euthanized, about 8 per month. That’s a euthanasia rate of 23% which is far in excess of the euthanasia rate of Irvine and Mission Viejo, but better than it has been for previous years at the County.
• Among 39 animals killed, there were 8 dogs and 7 cats. 5 dogs and 1 cat were euthanized because they were considered aggressive.
• 36% of the animals euthanized were classified as “too young” and 15% were euthanized for aggressiveness. The remainder was euthanized for medical reasons.

SERVICES

• 4,256 licenses were purchased - 3,376 (79%) were for altered dogs, 469 (11%) for seniors, 329 (8%) for unaltered dogs, 58 for puppies, 14 for guide dogs, and 10 for cats. That’s an average of 851 licenses per month. Most of these licensed were purchased (renewed) by mail.
• In terms of services, the most common services were stray pick-up (28%), general investigations (5%), dead animal pickup (3.8%), wild life pickup (3.3%), and cruelty investigations (2.6%). In the 5 months OCAS performed 1096 services, or about 200 per month.

Putting it all together, in an average month

• About 32 animals entered OCAS from Lake Forest
• 23 left, mostly returned to owner, adopted, or transferred.
• 8 animals were euthanized, including 1 dog and 1 cat
• 1 died or got lost
• OCAS performed about 200 services, of which more than 100 were stray pickup.

Now that we have some numbers to play with, I can see that some more changes need to be made. Feel free to go to the city’s website and look for yourself and offer constructive changes on Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook.

As we perfect the data reporting, we plan to coordinate the data from OCAS with the data coming from the new Animal Adoption Center.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has 1 dog, 1 cat, and 5 birds.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a town hall meeting every quarter. Click here for a summary of the last one. The next meeting will be on Sept. 9 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.