Santa Barbara is a dog town. Beaches, movie theaters, shops — domesticated canines are everywhere. At bars downtown, it is not unusual to find four-legged pups awkwardly sitting on the next stool. When City Council discusses no-leash zones, there are few empty seats in the pews.
These days, the county pound on Patterson Avenue looks more like a boutique pet shop full of groomed mutts patiently awaiting a new owner. But that has not always been the case. Just five years ago, more than 80 dogs — twice the number of available cages — packed into the shelter on any given day. This week, there were 32 dogs.
One of them was Courage, a black-and-white pit bull, who came from the Lompoc shelter with a skin infection so horrendous his owner could have faced criminal charges. “In the past, [Courage] would have maybe been euthanized,” explained Dori Villalon, the shelter’s operations manager, one of five new positions that the county created last year to improve a department long plagued by dysfunction and understaffing.