ALERT! Your Dog and the 4th of July
ANIMAL SAFETY-Many dogs are terrified by fireworks. Some dogs are so frightened that they run away.
If you can, keep your dogs in a quiet and safe place around the 4th of July and stay home with her or him. If you go out, keep your dog indoors where it cannot escape.
Keep your dog on leash when you go outside during a time when there are fireworks, even if you are going into your yard. You would be amazed to hear about feats of jumping from balconies, jumping over, or digging under fences, crashing through windows or doors, or escaping from a leash when there are fireworks.
If your dog does run away, contact your City Animal Shelter. Contact information for the shelter covering Tarzana is: West Valley Animal Shelter, 888-452-7381 or 818-756-9466, 20655 Plummer Street, Chatsworth, CA 91331.
Contact information for the other shelters is here. If you find a runaway dog and you don’t know or can’t contact the owner, also call your City Animal Shelter. It’s essential that these dogs be caught as quickly as possible, so they do not get hit by a car, attacked by coyotes, or suffer some other terrible fate.
City Animal Control Officers (ACOs) will be scanning dogs they pick up for chips.t If the dog has a chip or identification tag, the ACO will attempt to contact the owner and bring the dog home, rather than bringing the dog to the shelter.
Please make sure your dog has a chip with current contact information and an identification tag.
Thank you to the ACOs and everyone at the Animal Services Department for the hard work they do during this time to reunite runaway dogs with their families.
(Jeffrey Mausner (www.MausnerLaw.com) is the Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils Liaison to the Los Angeles Animal Services Department, 2nd Vice President of the Tarzana Neighborhood Council and Chair of its Animal Welfare Committee, and a Volunteer at the West Valley Animal Shelter. He was previously a Neighborhood Council Budget Advocate and is now a Budget Representative. He is a retired attorney and law school professor and was formerly a Federal Prosecutor for the U.S. Justice Department.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
