A woman had her newly-adopted dog mistakenly euthanized by a local shelter just an hour before she was set to pick her up.
The tragic mixup happened after Jianna Maarten Sadda called the Los Angeles Animal Services’ South LA Shelter to say she would pick up Sheba, her newly adopted pit bull mix, by 3pm on June 11.
But when she called again at 2pm, shelter staff told her Sheba was dead, NBC Los Angeles reported.
“Lived half her life in the shelter, so she had been in for a whole year,” Sadda said, of the two-year-old dog. “And after a year, a dog will usually go crazy after being in ‘jail,’ so we call it. And she was still such a good dog.”
The South LA Shelter Networker, an Instagram account that highlights dogs at the shelter, described Sheba as a “a playful girl who enjoys fetch.”
The shelter told Sadda they euthanized the two-year-old dog due to a communication error, according to NBC.
The same day Sheba died, LA Animal Services started a new temporary policy. Dogs with dangerous behavior now need to be adopted or saved by an “authorized rescue group” within three days, or they’ll be killed. Before, the dogs on the “red list” for behavior had one week.
The new policy came after a 63lb dog mauled kennel supervisor Leslie Corea on May 31. Corea needed at least three surgeries to recover, NBC Los Angeles reports.
“There are so many people that have been bit and mauled at the shelters and it needs to stop because we’re overcrowding and we’re not euthanizing the animals that need to be euthanized in a timely manner,” Corea said.
But Sadda told NBC Los Angeles there was no behavioral reason to euthanize Sheba. “She was purely killed for space,” she said.
The South LA Shelter Networker also described Sheba as “well-behaved,” both around people and other dogs.
Meanwhile, many community members have pushed back on the new policy. A group of Animal Services volunteers have contacted LA Mayor Karen Bass to share their concerns, NBC Los Angeles reports.
The Independent has contacted Los Angeles Animal Control for comment.
Last month, a Maryland woman said she experienced a similar communication breakdown when she brought her ill puppy to a shelter to be euthanized, and a year later he was up for adoption at the same center.
Kristie Pereira said she decided to put her dog down after consulting several experts who agreed he would not recover, the Associated Press reports. But after finding Beau up for adoption a year later, Pereira said the shelter had decided he did not need to be euthanized.
“The person that called me was so rude and just disrespectful and just being really nasty towards me,” Pereira told tAP last month. “Just saying, you know, that I abandoned him, and that I left him to die. That I never cared about him.”
She was told that the dog “will never go back to you.” As of late May, Beau was still listed on the shelter’s website.
