L.A. Love & Leashes opens in Westside Pavilion Mall
Los Angeles is on the fast track to becoming a no-kill community. Getting animals out of Los Angeles Animal Services and into the public eye is a key component to increasing the save rate for the city.
The recently opened Best Friends Pet Adoption and Spay/Neuter Center in the Northeast Valley is a mega facility designed to adopt out and spay/neuter thousands of animals. It is a hub for grand-scale lifesaving.
L.A. Love & Leashes "pet store"
The new boutique L.A. Love & Leashes shares the same goal. The brainchild of Friends of L.A. Animal Shelters, a volunteer-run organization dedicated to saving animals, this "pet store" pulls dogs and cats from Los Angeles Animal Services. Located in the Westside Pavilion Mall, the boutique is the perfect setting for adoptable animals.
Adoptable pets get seen
at L.A. Love & Leashes.
L.A. Love & Leashes’ grand opening on January 21, 2012, was a success. With crowds of well-wishers and adopters, the premiere featured Megan Blake and the Super Smiley Flash Mob 4 Pet Adoption, who wowed the audience with a rocking performance. Acknowledging their important work, Los Angeles Councilmember Paul Koretz presented Friends of L.A. Animal Shelters with an award for opening the city’s humane pet store. And esteemed guest Brenda Barnette, general manager of Los Angeles Animal Services, was also there beaming as the avenues for saving lives broadened before her eyes.
"Creating L.A. Love & Leashes is just a great way to get the animals of L.A. Animal Services out of the shelter environment into the public," shares Amber N. Yoo, co-founder of Friends of L.A. Animal Shelters and one of the driving forces behind L.A. Love & Leashes. "It’s an innovative adoption program that gives the adoptable pets from Los Angeles an upbeat place to be seen. Every morning a whole van load of wonderful cats and dogs come to the store. The adoptions are one hundred percent city adoptions. We use their adoption screening process and they get the fees. Of course all the animals are spayed and neutered before going home."
Opening day boasted 10 adoptions, and to say thank-you, Friends of L.A. Animal Shelters donated half of the adoption fees for the day’s adoptions to the people who are making this store a success. All the adoption fees from the boutique go straight to L.A. Animal Services, so this was just another way for Friends of L.A. Animal shelters to give back even more to the community.
Holiday pet adoptions
While their official opening was not until January, L.A. Love & Leashes did not want to miss out on the throngs of Christmas shoppers, so they held a holiday adoption drive in their space during December. In three weeks, they saw 51 animals adopted. That’s 51 pets out of the shelter system and 51 animals who were not purchased from the pet trade industry.
Join L.A. Love & Leashes in saving pets' lives.