Pet Owners: Know Where To Look When Fido Goes Missing

The story of Bella has been making the rounds of animal lovers recently, and the dog's tale is one of sadness. The Rancho Santa Margarita dog was euthanized, much to the distress of the owner, largely because it did not have its tags and because the owners were looking in the wrong place for what they described as a lovable pit bull/great dane mix.

Bella was destroyed six days after she went missing.

The incident is a good reminder for local pet owners to understand where they need to look when their dog or cat goes missing, and that they should have a microchip placed on the animal.

Pets in RSM, Trabuco Canyon, Coto de Caza and Las Flores that are taken into custody of the county—the dog pound, if you will—don't remain in south Orange County. They are taken to Orange County Animal Care, which is located at 561 The City Drive South, in Orange.

The facility is open daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., except for Wednesday when it's open until 7 p.m. It is closed holidays.

• Click this link for a list of animal shelters in Orange County.

A common mistake is to seek a lost pet at the Mission Viejo Animal Shelter (949-470-3045) because it's so close. That might be the case if the dog is picked up in Mission Viejo and doesn't have tags, but not if it's picked up locally.

OC Animal Care provides licensing services for the following cities: Anaheim, Brea, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Laguna Hills, Lake Forest, Orange, Placentia, Rancho Santa Margarita, San Juan Capistrano, Stanton, Tustin, Villa Park, Yorba Linda, and all unincorporated areas of Orange County. If you do not live in one of these cities, please contact your animal care provider for licensing information.

Patch ran a story on this in December, 2010; below is a reprint of the "Animal Writes" column by April Josephson, though the link will take you to the original.

If you know me, then I don't have to tell you that I'm an animal welfare activist. I'm your go-to person when you're looking to adopt a pet, need to find a vet or doggie day care, find a stray animal (domestic or wild) and don't know what to do next, need to re-home your pet, or have a question about animal feeding or care. I've lived in RSM for close to 20 years, 15 of which have included animal rescue.

From the time I was a part of the Rancho Santa Margarita Cityhood Committee, everyone knew that if and when we built a local animal shelter, I would be involved. Well, as it turns out, after 10 years as a city, we still don't have our own animal shelter. When RSM incorporated on Jan. 1, 2000, Rancho Santa Margarita became a contract city, which means that we contract with outside entities to provide the majority of our city services. Overall this was a smart fiscal and managerial decision. On the other hand, going this route didn't leave us many viable options for animal care services.

Which leads me to a misconception about Rancho Santa Margarita:  that our animal shelter is the Mission Viejo shelter. Ask anyone who doesn't own an animal, or owns one but hasn't licensed or lost it. I'm willing to bet that they have no idea where our shelter is, or they think we share the Mission Viejo shelter.

I'm sorry to say that is not the case. Time and again I come across otherwise well-informed local residents who don't realize this. The city of Rancho Santa Margarita is one of 18 cities in Orange County that contract with the county for our animal shelter services.

OC Animal Care is at 561 The City Drive South, in Orange, across  from The Block at Orange. That is RSM's local animal shelter.

If your pet is found on the streets of Rancho, be prepared to make the drive north past the treacherous Orange Crush to reclaim Scruffy. That is, unless he is licensed and/or microchipped. Why does that make a difference? Because animal control officers carry laptops and microchip scanners in their trucks so that they can quickly locate owner information and return Scruffy to you if he has been chipped or is wearing a license.

On the other hand, you should know that if licensed and/or microchipped Scruffy wanders over the border into Mission Viejo and is picked up by that city's animal control services, he will 1) be identified as coming from RSM, and 2) be transferred to the Orange facility if not claimed immediately.

Here's one thing to be thankful for: The OC Animal Care website is very thorough and easy to use, and the staff updates it throughout the day, seven days a week. If Scruffy does go missing, you can look for him online at ocpetinfo.com, under the "How Do I?" drop-down menu link "Find a Lost Pet." If you don't see him, you should make the trek up there, just in case.

With so many cities using one shelter, OC Animal Care is usually bursting at the seams with animals. If you're looking to adopt a pet, you'll find a vast array of animals available for adoption under the aptly named "Adopt a Pet" link. Before you go to a pet store for any kind of pet, take a look at this page. You might be surprised at what's available. As of today, if you're interested in a python snake, there's one available. Just yesterday, I received a message about a young female sheep for adoption. Not that you can have a sheep as a pet in Rancho—but you get the point.

Although the story of Bella didn't have a happy ending, there was a drop in the number of animals at Orange County Animal Care in 2011, which also reduced the number euthanized, according to year-end statistics released by the shelter.

A total of 31,044 animals—dog, cats and other creatures—found themselves at the shelter in 2011. That's 4 percent fewer than in 2010, when 32,390 animals spent time there.

"It's tough to put a specific reason on [the decrease]," Ryan Drabek, director of OC Animal Care, told Patch in a phone interview.

Ryan Drabek, director of OC Animal are, said that the number of animals at the shelter has been decreasing each year since that total peaked in 2007, which could point to a connection to the late-2000s recession.

"[2007] was one of our biggest years ever," Drabek said. "We've seen constant decreases since then and that's a trend we want to continue to see."

A total of 10,024 animals were adopted from the facility during the year.

Of those who ended up at the shelter during 2011, 47 percent (or 14,634) were eventually euthanized. An additional 6 percent (1,809) were killed by owner request because the animal was suffering, or had a history of aggression.

That's a 3 percent drop from the total number of creatures killed (excluding euthanasia by owner request) in 2010.

Angels For Animals is next month

The fifth annual Angels For Animals is August 17 at Angels Stadium in Anaheim. See the attached flyer.

—Sarah De Crescenzo contributed to this story.