LA County's website is down and... no heaters

The LA County shelter website http://animalcare.lacounty.gov/ has been down for the last three days. No new animals were added since 11/5/07. Which means if you lost your dog or cat and you were looking to see if your pet showed up on the lost & found, you won't find him or her there - even though he or she might physically be at the shelter and is waiting for you to come bring him or her home.

The people at Admin have been notified and the answer is that they are working on it. Top priority but no estimated time of repair. It's Friday tomorrow and usually people at Admin don't have to work on Fridays, however, I was told that they will be there working to resolve the problem with the website.

It took several people emailing all day today to finally get them to post this message up on the website:

"We are experiencing technical difficulties and cannot retrieve current data at this time. We are aware of the problem and are working to resolve it as soon as possible."

The last time the website was down, many animals lost their lives. People who lost their pets count on the website to see if their pets showed up as strays; rescuers rely on the website being updated regularly so they know what dogs are there that they can help. Many highly adoptable animals were euthanized as the result. Hopefully, this time they will get the site up and running by tomorrow. I am being overly optimistic.

The other issue is the weather. It has been very cold at night the last couple of weeks. The animals at the LA County shelters are without any heat. For the very young and the very old - the cold is quite unforgiving. I've been asking to have heaters installed for a while but have been told that they are working on getting bids in. Well, that's great and all, but what about the animals freezing their butts off right now? What about the ones who are either coming down with upper-respiratory infection or are currently suffering from uri - do they just wait to develop pneumonia?

I have no idea how long or what it will take to change things at the LA County shelter system, but I am not going to give up. I will keep pushing Marcia Mayeda and her two deputy directors until they get off their duffs and DO something about the state of the shelters under their "leadership".