Ed Boks & friend. (Beth Clifton collage)
Ed Boks’ resumé in animal welfare includes having headed the animal control departments in Maricopa County, Arizona; New York City; Los Angeles; and Yavapai County, Arizona, plus the Spokane Humane Society.
Boks produces the blog Animal Politics with Ed Boks. He may be reached at animalpolitics8@gmail.com.
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(Beth Clifton collage)
Through the looking glass
The Best Friends Animal Society is again mobilizing members to pressure Los Angeles City officials to revive a vague multi-million-dollar proposal it initially presented to Los Angeles Animal Services in July 2024.
Los Angeles has been through this looking glass before.
In 2011, Best Friends signed an agreement to manage the Northeast Valley Shelter in Mission Hills, built by the City of Los Angeles, for $1.00 per year.
Operational difficulties soon emerged, in particular multiple lawsuits resulting from incidents such as the misguided adoption of a pit bull named Bleu.
Bleu, adopted through Best Friends, attacked a 13-year-old, causing severe injuries that required reconstructive surgery. That case was settled out of court, but many similar cases followed.
(See $7.5 million award for mauling by pit bull rehomed from L.A. Animal Services.)
(Ed Boks collage)
Withdrawal symptoms
Best Friends, issuing a premature declaration that Los Angeles had become a “no-kill” city, withdrew from the Mission Hills shelter in 2020.
Best Friends’ failure to sustain its commitment to the Mission Hills shelter should raise doubts about its ability to handle future projects of a similar scope.
The premature declaration of Los Angeles as a “no-kill” city illustrates a focus on optics over substance.
Bear in mind that a significant aspect of Best Friends’ operations has always been their reliance on funding from Los Angeles supporters, beginning with tabling in Los Angeles in the 1980s to support Best Friends’ shelters, first in Arizona and, after a move, in Kanab, Utah.
(Ed Boks collage)
Better for fundraising than for Los Angeles animals
While Best Friends now raises millions from sympathetic donors, their focus on solving systemic animal welfare issues is increasingly questionable.
Though the Best Friends cofounders worked for years with minimal compensation, that generation of leadership has mostly passed on or retired, and current Best Friends executive compensation alone totals nearly $4 million a year.
How does this resource allocation align with their stated mission of saving dogs and cats?
Maintaining a high-profile presence in Los Angeles may be much better for Best Friends’ fundraising than Los Angeles animals.
Kristen Hassen. (Facebook photo)
Political bedfellows
The core of the Best Friends proposal reportedly involves embedding Best Friends staff within Los Angeles Animal Services to lead efforts aimed at achieving a 90% live release rate. Although Best Friends claims this strategy has worked in certain areas, there is evidence suggesting otherwise.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles city council recently approved a questionable consulting contract with Kristen Hassen, previously known as Kristen Auerbach, now doing business as Outcomes for Pets Consulting, LLC.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Rehomed pit bulls of dangerous history
Hassen on February 18, 2016 published an article on the web site of the pro-pit bull organization Animal Farm Foundation arguing that animal shelters should withhold information about potentially dangerous dogs from prospective adopters until after they become seriously interested in a dog.
Hassen herself, during a tenure at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Virginia, rehomed several pit bulls with dangerous history, some of them repeatedly, after they were returned by adopters, allegedly without disclosing that history to the next adopters.
Partially responding to those cases, some of which resulted in dog deaths and injuries to humans, the Virginia state assembly on March 30, 2018 enacted a law requiring that the bite histories of impounded or owner-surrendered dogs must be investigated, and must be disclosed to prospective adopters.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Wandering in the desert
Moving on to the Austin Animal Shelter in Texas, Hassen replaced traditional temperament testing with the “playgroup” approach advocated by Dogs Playing for Life founder Aimee Sadler, whose work was sponsored by the pit bull advocacy organization Animal Farm Foundation, specifically to promote pit bull adoptions.
(See What is the Austin Animal Center doing to dogs in the name of “play”? and Austin Animal Services: “On the far side of stupid”.)
Hassen next headed the Pima County Animal Care Department in Tucson, Arizona for three years. While there, Hassen was named as a defendant in at least one lawsuit involving injuries inflicted on two plaintiffs by a recently rehomed Rottweiler.
From there, Hassen moved on to the no-kill advocacy foundation Maddie’s Fund in September 2020, before opening her own consulting business.
(Ed Boks collage)
“Managed intake”
Among the contentious issues with Hassen’s approach is her reliance on “managed intake,” which means limiting the number of animals entering shelters, and “return to field” of cats and dogs found at large back into the community.
This method, inspired by Hassen’s observations of free-roaming dogs in Mexico, posits that homeless dogs and cats can live harmoniously within human communities without the need for conventional sheltering.
This is like praising the Mexican approach to drug cartels, alleging a peaceful society in absence of effective law enforcement.
Meanwhile the bodies pile up in ditches, as also do the bodies of roadkilled homeless cats and dogs, cats and dogs poisoned or shot as nuisances, and bones of cats and dogs in heaps of coyote droppings.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Serving the community?
Applying this model to U.S. cities like Los Angeles understandably sets off alarms.
In one notable case, under the alleged direction of an embedded Best Friends employee at the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, hundreds of cats from an overcrowded shelter were labeled “community cats” and released into the harsh Arizona desert, where their chances of survival were grim and their potential threat to wildlife should have been obvious.
Returning genuinely feral cats to habitat where they have already coexisted with their environment is one thing; mass dumping cats into unfamiliar habitat is quite another.
Will animals be subjected to similar outcomes under Hassen’s and Best Friends’ guidance?
If public safety, environmental health, and animal welfare are sacrificed in the name of improving statistics, how can these programs claim to be truly serving the community?
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Prioritizes metrics over animal welfare”
Opines Sharon Logan, founder of Paw Protectors, who successfully sued Orange County Animal Care and is currently suing the San Diego Humane Society for practicing “return to field” instead of strictly managed neuter/return of genuinely feral cats: “In my view, Hassen’s model prioritizes business metrics over animal welfare, leaving devastation in its wake.”
In addition to managed intake, Hassen is known for championing an appointment-only adoption process. This system requires potential adopters to register online, fill out questionnaires, and pre-pay with credit cards before meeting selected animals.
Critics argue that this method creates unnecessary barriers to adoption, reducing the number of animals finding homes and excluding people who are less tech-savvy or financially constrained.
Moreover, it limits transparency by reducing public access to shelters and curtails opportunities for potential adopters to meet a variety of animals.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Money don’t talk, it swears”
Hassen’s Los Angeles consulting fee was set at $24,995, reportedly to circumvent the city requirement for competitive bidding on contracts exceeding $25,000.
Riverside County, meanwhile, reportedly awarded Hassen a $2.4 million single-source contract.
These financial arrangements, combined with Hassen’s longtime close association with Best Friends, heighten concerns about potential ethical breaches and priorities pitting financial interests against animal welfare.
Danville Area Humane Society director Paulette Dean. (Facebook photo)
Muscling into Danville
The Best Friends Animal Society is meanwhile muscling into local animal shelter operations in other cities across the country.
In Danville, Virginia, for instance, Best Friends is gunning for Danville Area Humane Society executive director Paulette Dean, a steadfast advocate for comprehensive animal welfare since 1984.
The clash began with a seemingly simple offer: Best Friends proposed transferring cats from the Danville Area Humane Society to their New York facility.
However, Dean refused to adopt Best Friends‘ limited admission policy, which restricts intake to manageable numbers, but disregards the needs of animals arriving at the shelter.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Weaponized stats out of context
In response, Best Friends launched a “Danville Deserves Better” campaign, publicly criticizing the Danville Humane Society for its lower-than-average live release rate.
This highlights a central issue in the “no-kill” debate: while boosting save rates sounds commendable, it must be weighed against the reality of caring for a growing population of sick, injured, and dangerous animals who may not be adoptable in the short term.
The Danville public shaming campaign, disturbingly similar to the pressures currently facing Los Angeles Animal Services, underscores Best Friends‘ tendency to wield statistics out of context to advance its agenda, at the expense of nuanced, community-specific solutions that truly serve both animals and residents.
(Beth Clifton collage)
What’s wrong with a 90% live release rate?
Best Friends defines “no-kill” as a live release rate of at least 90% of the animals entering a shelter.
However, as shelters approach this threshold, they increasingly care for the most vulnerable animals—the sick, injured, and dangerous—because successful spay/neuter programs and responsible pet ownership reduce the intake of healthy, adoptable animals. The shelter’s role naturally shifts toward being a safety net for these at-risk animals.
This makes achieving a 90% live release rate nearly impossible. As shelters focus on rehabilitating or caring for animals with severe medical or behavioral issues, euthanasia becomes limited to cases where rehabilitation isn’t viable.
In this way, a shelter may honor the spirit of “no-kill” even if it doesn’t meet the strict 90% target.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Betraying the core mission of humane societies
The key difference lies in Best Friends’ narrow focus on a quantifiable goal versus the nuanced reality that communities face.
Effective animal welfare requires adjusting strategies based on the evolving needs of the animal population.
At the core of the conflicts in both Danville and Los Angeles is a fundamental clash of philosophies about what defines effective animal welfare.
As Paulette Dean of the Danville Area Humane Society points out, adopting a limited-admission modus operandi could result in turning away the very animals most in need of care.
For her and her community, the Danville Area Humane Society exists to protect and support all animals. Denying them help would betray the core mission of humane societies.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Prioritizing preventive measures
Achieving authentic no-kill animal control requires prioritizing preventive measures, in particular focused spay/neuter initiatives addressing high-risk animals including pit bulls and feral cats.
Across the country, many communities are feeling the Best Friends’ pressure to achieve a 90% live release rate.
But several cities that have accepted Best Friends’ help have come to regret doing so.
In El Paso, public complaints of pet abandonment under Best Friends’ embed program led to the termination of their contract. The city saw a significant rise in stray animals, which caused public safety risks, health concerns, and stretched local animal services thin.
As Ron Comeau, director of Lucy’s Dream Rescue, put it, “It’s going to take El Paso years to recover from Best Friends’ programs.”
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
Pertinent Additional Reading
Harnessing the Power of the Per Capita Kill Rate explains how the Live Release Rate and Euthanasia Rate fails to capture the true impact of shelter policies and programs, and how the Per Capita Kill Rate provides a true measure of change in context of broader community dynamics.
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The post Best Friends’ no-kill initiative power play, by Ed Boks appeared first on Animals 24-7.