Tails of the City Animal Rescue

I am a shelter volunteer and I just wanted to add this about Tails of the City: they take a chance on dogs who otherwise would not be rescued. While many rescues take only the white fluffys and puppies who are easy to adopt money makers, Tails of the City is a true rescue in every sense of the word. They work so hard, the dog rescue is run by a lady by the name of MaryAnn [the cat rescue is separate] who cares so much about animals and who does not suffer fools gladly and may be a little too blunt and feisty for her own good — but she places dogs carefully, she has taken on wonderful dogs who would be dead now but for her courage and fearlessness.

Under-​qualified and seemingly no true compassion for their rescue animals and a rather curt/​short assembly line way of dealing with would be families and homes for the animals.
I made a quick introduction in my contact with them expressing my interest in one of their rescues, here is how my interaction went with them:
I understood that their policy stated they do not work with families with children under 6, which is their business– and I respect that– while I myself have had pets (dogs included) since I was a baby for I believe you can have children while having pets as well, I get it’s a safety issue.
On one hand I have had my dog longer than I have had children, they play with one another under 6 adults watchful eyes on our estate and he is separated and well taken care of.
Here is the issue, I want my dog happy and I don’t believe in giving up my dog just because I planned on having children. He needed a companion and we have more than enough love and supplies and a caring home to give– I said he was a bit rambunctious to which their reply was «I don’t understand. You have a rambunctious dog and yet want another rambunctious dog? No.»
In a nutshell reply. I’m sorry but I didn’t say anything about wanting another rambunctious dog– I didn’t even get the chance to meet any of their dogs let alone see what demeanor and disposition any of their dogs had. In my experience with animals (which is extensive) you have to match personalities and be a good fit– that is how you truly find a fitting family and home. Do you see what I mean by under qualified? If you do not know something as simple as that… And that’s also why I say came across as short and not really payng attention to potential good homes for their animals.
This is not about my family wanting to create a dangerous situation or an overwhelming situation. We were simply looking to rescue another animal (as our current dog is also a rescue) while having a companion for our sweet Charlie.
The air of having this idea that we were going to have two dogs in a room with our young children unsupervised and ill equipped was extremely judgemental. While they said they were not judging and it’s their policy and are sure we will find some dog that will fit us elsewhere– let’s call a spade a spade.
Look at the ratio of bad reviews vs. your good reviews, I’ve read them all– clearly you are doing more of a disservice to rescuing and helping animals rather than truly helping them. I respect your cautionary approach that is truly well and necessary– but perhaps you should take a little more care in being attentive to what you’re really trying to achieve rather than insulting, judging, or repelling families. A little customer finesse can go a long way policies in place or no, I could refer others in my network if I felt the business were outstanding and even took care to find out about us and our interest even if their policy ultimately didn’t allow for us to rescue an animal. Thank you for your time or rather lack of.

Proceed at your own risk. After my own experience and talking with some people and reading other people’s reviews here, you can expect some serious lag in communication. I had been trying to contact the organization for a week via phone and email, but nothing. Only after physically visiting the adoption site (which is an hour drive away from me) and leaving more messages did I even get a call back for them to tell me they adopted out the dog I had been eyeing. Normally, this wouldn’t be a huge issue. I get it. She was a cute puppy and it’s great she has a new home with her sister. It’s a first come first serve game. Now, the issue was is that I called the day before and whichever woman I had on the phone told me she would put a temporary hold on this puppy for me. If I misunderstood what a temporary hold means maybe I would understand but I was under the impression that I would at least get a warning that someone else was looking to adopt the dog. I even had my parents willing to give me their dog in order to accommodate to their requests that this puppy should not be the only dog in the household. They would have known that if they had checked their email the night before they gave the puppy to another family. I’m sure this rescue has a myriad of success stories, but after this experience, I feel extremely disillusioned and discouraged with the entire adoption process. As a rescue, if your priorities are to get these dogs forever homes, one would think responsiveness would be a key factor in accomplishing that goal. Good luck to everyone involved. You’ll need it.

I found my wonderful dog Rocko through tails of the city! Originally we were fostering him and he had some medical issues which Tails of the city were very good with getting him into the vet as soon as he needed care. after fostering him for a month or so we fell in love and decided we wanted to adopt him. Adoption process was great and we are very happy with our experience.
I noticed there are bad reviews on here which I don’t think is very fair, this organization is doing the best they can, rescuing animals and trying to find fosters is an incredibly hard task and it’s hard for these rescue groups to know the habits of these dogs/​cats as they are recently rescued from kill shelter etc. Keep doing what your doing Tails of the City :)

Horrible! Horrible! Horrible experience with these folks!
They had me sit a rescued Pitbull through Rover’s platform. Provided me with a cage to put the dog in whenever I had to leave my apartment because of separation anxiety. However, they neglected to inform me that I had to drug the dog with Benedrly to have her remain in the cage.
After almost two weeks of sitting the dog and several cage escapes (as a result, damaged property and numerous poop accidents) the truth was finally revealed. I immediately asked them to pick up the dog since I didn’t feel comfortable drugging her with Benedryl… but conveniently they were now ALL out of town.
The following day, I ended up having to take the dog to a shelter just so I could leave my house for a doctors appointment.
After all this, I was not compensated for the days I sat the dog and the damage to my property. So, I will be taking them to court and reporting them to PETA for the practices they condone.
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I had to repost this review. The first, posted around August 2014, was deleted by Unilocal stating:
Hi there,
We wanted to let you know that we’ve removed your review of Tails of the City Animal Rescue. It looks like your review was meant for a listing for Rover. If this is the case, feel free to repost your review to the correct business listing.
We hope you will continue to participate on Unilocal,while keeping in mind our Content Guidelines.
I replied back:
This is not the case.
My review is specifically for this business — Tails of the City Animal Rescue — who requested that I drug a dog they put in my care.
They also promised to reimburse me for damages to my property, which they never did.
I have proof of all of this through the text messages from Tails of the City Animal Rescue workers.
Regards
— — –
Honestly and sadly, these people are doing terrible damage in the long-​run for rescue animals in this country. «Tails of the City Animal Rescue» the way you treat the humans interested in helping is incredibly important! After an ordeal like this I doubt I will be going near any other rescue organization.
To think that I had let the whole incident go and was going to let their own karma catch up with them; but not only have they taken advantage of me, now it seems someone wants to make the incident disappear by flagging my reviews.
It is time for this business’ practices to be addressed!
I have also been contacted by a former volunteer who says she went through a similar predicament with them.
I’ll be adding screenshots of my text conversations with these folks at «Tails of the City Animal Rescue», so Unilocal isn’t confused or encouraged to believe this review is about another business.
— — — —
Here’s a Unilocal message I received on Jan, 13^th 2015
«First of all, you fucking idiot, Benadryl is suggested by vets every single day. It is perfectly fine to give to dogs. Second of all, you piece of shit, you took a dog to the SHELTER and have the nerve to criticize a team of volunteers working every single day to save these poor animals? Are you so stupid that you don’t realize what happens at the shelter? You should be anywhere near a dog let alone taking your nonsense to the internet as if you care at all about rescue animals. You’re scum.»
No doubt another one of their minions. They are a gift that keeps on giving!
Screenshot of conversation attached. Also blocked the user from further contacting me. SMH!

Keeping these animals alive and finding them happy homes is clearly their number one priority — and as a volunteer run organization with limited time and resources, that is no easy task. Perhaps that means that taking care of the people who think they may want to adopt is a lower priority. I’m definitely OK with that.

I thought it would be nice to foster one of their cats since I had a male cat of my own, but I can’t stress enough how much regret I feel. During the 24 hours I had the female foster cat, the cat exhibited symptoms of illness – the worse one being that she had defecated a large volume of light grey, soft-​serve icecream-​like diarrhea with fresh red blood the following morning. Worried for her health and my own cat’s health, I contacted two different vets and they both told me that the cat needed medical attention, the bloody grey diarrhea was serious (not just «stress» diarrhea) and likely a sign of a parasitic/​viral infection (common in multiple cat households), the cat may have a compromised immune system due to her history (she was caged with 60 other cats from a cat hoarder), and that I should isolate her from my own cat to prevent spread of infection. I had just spent $ 600 on my cat, about 2 weeks before for his annual exam (the entire Senior package including full panel blood work + extras) so I told Tails to pick up the foster cat (I called in the morning and told them to pick her up that same day) and take her to a vet because they wouldn’t pay/​allow me to take her to the vet myself, and I was worried for my cat’s safety and needed to isolate him from her.
That same day, so much time was wasted with back-​n-​forth text, phone, and in-​person arguments as they tried to convince me to keep her – they changed their story about their cats’ litter facilities, revealed all of a sudden the «tests», her «5 day isolation» and «stool monitoring» that was administered days before they gave her to me, and made ridiculous claims about cat health in general (while completely ignoring the fact that I had presented them proof of two expert vet opinions and I work in the field with Gastrointestinal MD and PhD scientists) – like «it’s completely normal for cats to have grey, bloody diarrhea»; «my mom and I are cat experts»; and also «animals don’t share the same disease symptoms as humans». Ummmm… no comment. They finally picked the cat up after 10 pm.
Two days later I had to bring my cat to the vet to get the stool and urine sample that they couldn’t get out of him weeks earlier and that I had already paid for. His stool was positive for a highly contagious parasite (in the early stages, so he didn’t have the bloody diarrhea yet). My vet told me that he must have contracted it from the foster cat, because the only way to get it is if it is passed on from the feces of an infected animal – and animals with this parasite are commonly immunosuppressed from being confined in small spaces with multiple cats. My cat had been strictly indoors with no other cats for 12 years, had a clean fecal test every year his entire life, and had not had diarrhea since he was a kitten. Of course, when I kindly notified Tails of this and that the foster cat should be tested, they made up more lies with one of them being that she was already tested before they had given her to me. While my cat was still taking his antibiotics to clear the parasite, he got urinary blockage out of the blue for the first time in his life. They were blood clots blocking his urethra which is usually caused by inflammation (parasites cause inflammation, so I believe it was from that). My cat stayed in an animal hospital for an entire week while his prognosis worsened and the vets tried to save him, but they told me he was very unlikely to make it so it was best to put him down because he was in a lot of pain. It was literally the worst day of my life. My cat passed away – literally 2 weeks after fostering Tails of the City’s sick cat. I was too devastated to complain and never told them what had happened, because no good would come out of blaming them. My cat passing away after 12 years of being with me, just completely shattered my heart and I felt guilty for it because I brought the foster cat in thinking my cat would have a friend and I was doing a good deed. I know this sounds totally stupid and crazy cat lady-​like, but it’s been over a year now, and I still can’t get myself to adopt a new cat because I’m still mourning my cat. He was my first cat and we were that close. :-(

My mom saw an Aussie («Adams») at one of their adoption events recently and submitted an adoption application. She never heard back so she called twice and emailed twice and still never heard back. A responsible animal rescue should communicate with potential adopters and either let them know that the animal has been adopted or that the rescue has simply chosen not to adopt to the client.
In the time spent waiting on this rescue, my mom could have been pursuing another dog in another rescue shelter. Her future dog is forced to wait on his/​her forever home that much longer.

STAY AWAY! DANGEROUS!
Tails of the City cannot be trusted, they will put you and your family in danger just to place a dog. I adopted a dog from them who seemed wonderful. Their description said he was great with anyone except sometimes other dogs, no other issues were mentioned. After two months, once he got comfortable, the dog started attacking me and my family whenever he was given a simple command! He attacked my hand so badly I ended up in the hospital.
I called Tails and they treated me TERRIBLY. Mary Ann, the founder, said things like I should expect to be bitten if I own a dog (I’ve owned dogs my whole life… Never been sent to the hospital) and that I shouldn’t give up after one incident (THAT PUT ME IN THE HOSPITAL?!) I then found out that the dog had acted up like this and bitten before. THEY HID THIS INFORMATION FROM ME. I NEVER would have adopted a dog that had ever been aggressive.
I had no choice but to return the dog and they could not have been more terrible about it. Rudest people I’ve ever encountered. Completely blamed me and were mad I didn’t want to keep the dog after multiple attacks, including the serious one. They are definitely the stereotype of the «crazy» rescue people who care more about the dogs than humans.
If they had been nicer to me after the incident, I would not be writing this review. I would chalk it up to a mistake or oversight. However, the way they treated me just solidified that they DO NOT CARE about happy homes, they care about numbers and getting difficult dogs out of their hair. DO NOT TRUST THEM. Go to a rescue that is honest. You could get attacked by a dog due to their dishonesty, or worse the dog could attack someone else and you could be held responsible. Stay away.

I adopted my first cat from Tails this past Spring after seeing him at the PetCo on LaBrea. It was my first adoption, so I don’t have any measuring stick to compare it to, but the process was smooth and the team at Tails was very helpful. They did an in-​home visit before letting me pick up my boy, they answered my questions regarding how best to raise the kitten, and minus a small eye infection the cat I adopted has been an angel.
I don’t know if they’re the best ever, but they put me and my boy together. I’m a fan :)

I’m actually quite shocked to see some of the low ratings on here… possibly new people are running the rescue because the two ladies I worked with were nothing but pleasant and responsible.
I adopted my cat Percy from them, and so happy I did. He was at Petco and the second I saw him, I knew he was my cat. Turns out he’s an evil raging monster, but he’s still my little boy.
I worked with Carla and Talia, and they were great. They came to the house, asked me a billion questions to make sure I was offering a safe home, and seemed genuinely caring about the animal’s welfare. I’ve referred a few people to adopt from them, and will continue to do so!

Any organization that spends it’s free time helping abused and unwanted animals deserves five stars. Forget the personalities it’s about the animals and the dedication of these people.

We adopted our dog, Jackie back in 2009. It was a long process, took about 8 weeks. I think they wanted to make sure we really wanted him. It took some begging on our behalf to really get the ball moving on his adoption. Anyway, he’s almost five this year, and we love him so much and he’s been a great member of our family.
The last year, Jackie has been having some aggression/​anxiety issues. We sought a trainer and the methods only made him worse. I then contacted Tails for trainer recommendations and received no help. I understand that they are volunteers. I’m in the non profit field myself and have worked tremendously with volunteers. I get it, it’s tough. But you get more volunteers, or hire a part time person. Whatever you got to do to provide good service.
Not very pleased that post adoption, they provided zero support.

I have had a terrible experience with Tails of the City. I adopted two kittens about two months ago from PetCo in Glendale. Apparently both kittens were sick unbeknownst to me.
After spending hundreds of dollars to try to treat the sick kittens, they continued to have uncontrollable diarrhea. I kept in contact with Tails, and they seemed to think I was unreasonable for not putting up with the constant diarrhea. According to my vet, the parasite the kittens most likely had is harmful to children. In essence I was told the kittens are more important than my children.
I finally came to the realization that the sick kittens were too much for me to handle. I could not make them well. Tails never offered me compensation for all that I had spent, nor did they offer to give me my donation back. All I got was guilt for not wanting to keep two kittens with non-​stop explosive diarrhea.
I would never adopt from these scam artists again. They knew they gave me sick kittens because later on they told me that the mother and brother were sick too. Whatever parasite these adorable kittens have was responsible for killing my elderly cat. So now I don’t have any cats at home. My children and I are extremely heartbroken. :(

I just adopted my second dog (Jack) from Tails of the City. I could not disagree more with the negative reviews by some. Tails of the City is a great organization. I know first hand how hard Maryanne and company work to rescue their animals from Kill Shelters and put them with fosters until they can find their forever homes.
These negative reviews may keep a dog or car from finding a loving home.

I’m bummed I have to post this review but I had the most frustrating experience with Tails of the City this past week.
I went to a Petco adoption on La Brea and found a dog I fell in love with right away. I filled out the adoption app on the spot and was told by Maryann that she would call me by that Sunday to schedule a home visit. (There are two Maryann’s…I think the woman who runs it and one of her volunteers or staff. The one I dealt with was the latter.)
Needless to say, I was anxious to schedule the visit and take the next steps to bringing the dog in to my life. I called Maryann on Sunday and she picked up but said she would call me back. She didn’t call me back so I tried texting asking her to call so we could schedule the home visit but she didn’t respond to that either. I kept trying to get her on the phone throughout the week but she never responded to my calls or texts and when she did, she said she would call but she never did.
This is such an emotional process and I felt like her lack of communication was irresponsible and unprofessional. I am beyond disappointed. I believe TOTC has the best intentions, but their job is to follow through on placement opportunities and they don’t seem to be able to handle that. Even if they felt I wasn’t a good fit for this particular dog, a 2 minute call to tell me as much lets me move on and stop fantasizing about my future with this dog.

We got our Yorkie, Brooklyn, from Tails of the City and can not say enough good things about the women who run this group. We live south of LA and it would have been very easy for them to say we should drive to pick her up or deny us altogether. However, after a couple of emails and filling out the application they drove to us and did a full house visit to make sure it was the right fit. They were very honest and did not try to sugarcoat any issues. The visit was a good amount of time and we did adopt Brooklyn. We have kept in touch and they are always happy to hear from us. If you want a quality rescue I highly recommend you support this organization.

I love Mary Ann the dog rescue person. Its too bad that the bad reviews here are mostly about the cat rescue. Not really Tails of the City, but whatever. TOTC tries their best to rescue and rehome as many dogs as possible! That’s their reason and purpose. If you come in on a sat, you will see them busting butt! Give them a chance, volunteer, adopt, foster, but please help. They need all the help you can give. Mary Ann gives her all for the safety and placement for each dog and she truly tries her best. Please support them today!

So, last weekend, I attended their adoption event at Petco. I am a firm believer that a cat chooses you and go through a process with a cat I am looking to adopt to make sure we are the right fit for each other. It’s a bond for life! I saw a kitten who greeted me warmly who I decided to take the next step with and asked to hold it. And was denied! I asked if there was maybe a room I could go with, to be able to interact with the cat, and was rudely told no. Instead they offered to open the cage so I could pet it.
Okay this is absolutely ridiculous. They expect me to know the right cat for my home simply based on petting it? Not even getting a chance to hold it and see how we bond? Are you kidding me? When told about how this is a drawback and can alienate potential adopters we were rebuffed rather rudely by a lady. You know the type. They think they know everything and only care about themselves and not the actual animals.
It’s probably just as well I didn’t get a chance to bond with the kitten. None of the kittens were very playful, a warning sign, and none seemed all that well socialized. In fact the area lacked hand sanitizer a huge NO NO when one is exposing kittens to random people.

I went to look at kittens and young adult cats at a Tails of the City showing, and ended up leaving heartbroken after falling in love with one of their kittens and then finding out that they will only place kittens in pairs. Even after explaining that I’ve had cats my whole life, have had previous experience raising a happy single kitten, work at home and would always be with the new kitten, and could not possibly have two cats in my apartment — they refused. They were quite unkind about it too! The foster mom that I met seemed the ‘crazy cat lady’ type — and acted totally offended that I would be so barbaric as to even consider raising one of her poor kittens alone. On top of all this, the cats all visibly had fleas.
In short — The people at Tails of the City are a little nuts, and not worth the headache or the heartache. GO TO HUMANE SOCIETY!