Sarah Leonard, intake coordinator at Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in San Francisco, plays with Lois on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. Lois is one of two pit bulls to arrive from Los Angeles following the fires who will now stay at Muttville. (Gina Castro/KQED)
Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in San Francisco on Thursday morning welcomed its two newest “fire girls,” as founder Sherri Franklin has dubbed the shelter’s latest additions.
Now wagging their tails in the main playroom, the six senior dogs Muttville has taken in from the Los Angeles area so far have been in rescue centers since before the Eaton and Palisades fires broke out. Franklin said Bay Area organizations are bringing the animals north to make room in overwhelmed Southern California shelters.
Senior pit bulls Lola and Cherry wagged their tails as they walked through the gates to the “Home of New Beginnings,” Muttville’s intake center.
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“Welcome to Lombark Street, curviest dog path in the world,” volunteer Craig Hermes said as he guided a timid and slow-moving Cherry up the winding path.
Cherry and Lola — now bounding ahead — had just made the 400-mile trip up Interstate 5 on Wednesday afternoon from Downey Animal Care Center in Los Angeles to San Francisco’s Mission District.
Cherry, a pit bull, arrives at Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in San Francisco on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, after being brought from a shelter in Los Angeles. (Gina Castro/KQED)
Muttville volunteers plan to drive down to Ventura for four more senior dogs next week, hoping to relieve pressure on L.A.-area shelters for evacuated owners looking to reunite in the coming days with pets they were separated from.
The East Bay SPCA has also taken in 10 dogs, and San Francisco’s branch brought 20 dogs and 10 cats to the city on Wednesday, including Lola and Cherry. They have been working with three shelters in the L.A. area since the fires began.
Muttville’s in-house veterinary staff could also head down to L.A. in the coming days to help shelters treating burned and injured animals there, and all of the locations are busy making room for more incoming pups since the fires’ impact will likely last weeks.
Sierra, a 7-year-old Shih Tzu Maltese mix, arrived at Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in San Francisco on Monday from Los Angeles. (Gina Castro/KQED)
“It’s not all at the front,” Franklin told KQED. “Some of this will be a few months out, which will be very sad because some of the people will realize they can’t keep these animals.”
Shelters generally work hard to post potentially displaced animals on social media to help them find their families, and Los Angeles is in the process of setting up a website to reunite microchipped pets with their owners, according to Franklin.
As weeks go by, though, there will likely be some who can’t be reconnected. Even before the blazes, many of the shelters in Southern California were already overflowing, according to Anne Moellering, the San Francisco SPCA’s chief of rescue and welfare. She said the best way people here can help is by taking in a rescue pet.
“We’re filling our shelter with the animals that are coming up here, as are some of the partner shelters that we’re working with to take more of the animals, so adoption is the number one [way people] can pull animals out of a shelter,” she told KQED. “Another great way to go is foster. That’s just a short-term hold of the animal, and that helps us to have more capacity for bringing in animals.”
Both the East Bay and San Francisco SPCAs are participating in free adoption events for puppies through Sunday to help clear their shelters. Both centers have adoption hours Wednesday through Sunday, and San Francisco’s is also open Tuesday afternoons.
“Come on down and talk to us and meet the animals,” Moellering said. “There’s no pressure, but we have an amazing team of adoption counselors here that can help you find exactly the right animal for you.”
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