A recently released audit of the San Jose Animal Care and Services found disturbing conditions at the city’s shelter. The 133-page report also found the shelter is overcrowded, dirty and it isn’t doing enough to prevent disease.
San Jose Animal Care shelter acting director Kiska Icard said that last year, they took in 2,000 more animals than the previous year and agrees overcrowding is a problem. As far as conditions, she said some photos don’t tell the whole story.
“You have to look at the big picture. Those images of couple of kennels don't show many kennels were clean," she said. "We do I think a really good job of managing monitoring when animals have been cleaned. We feed our animals twice a day. We sanitize the kennels every single day."
Icard also said the shelter has implemented a bar code system so volunteers and the public can alert staff right away if a kennel needs cleaning.
The audit also found the shelter needs to do a better job of working with animal rescue groups to outboard care for cats and dogs and do more at the shelter to animals get adopted.
“They just warehouse the animals for months and so the dogs are not socialized they may not even get walks and they sit in the back for weeks or months,’’ said Rebekah Davis-Matthews with the Sustain our Shelters.
Another concern, since the pandemic, the shelter has not offered a community spay and neuter program.
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“With the amount of animals in our shelter, they are our first priority and we are trying to work on building a a team to offer access to spay and neuter,” Icard said.
NBC Bay Area reached out to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who said the audit showed the shelter is overcrowded, has not appropriately used rescue partners or re-instituted low cost spay and neuter services. He added that "which has ultimately led to higher intake numbers and poor outcomes for animals that come through that shelter’’
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The San Jose City Council will formally receive the audit next week and animal advocates say they will be at the meeting to champion for change.
