TIMOMAX Intelligence
Follow the Money
Explore public spending connected to animals and animal welfare.
TIMOMAX organises publicly available government records for informational and transparency purposes. Inclusion of an organisation or award does not imply wrongdoing, endorsement, or a judgment about the effectiveness of the expenditure.
What happens to animals in Los Angeles County
Every figure on this page is read from Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control’s own published file when the page loads. Nothing is estimated, averaged with another county, or carried over from a previous year. Where the county does not publish something, this page says so instead of showing a zero.
A count the county reported. TIMOMAX grouped the county’s own records and counted them. Ask the county the same question and you get the same number; the exact codes are shown beside every figure.
A measure TIMOMAX worked out. Rates, shares and year-on-year changes are arithmetic performed here, not figures the county published. The method is shown so you can check it rather than trust it.
Los Angeles County, 2025-2026
Reported by Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control. Source field: every impound record with this intake fiscal year.
Reported by Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control. Source field: every record with an outcome recorded in this fiscal year.
Live outcomes divided by live plus non-live outcomes. Foster is left out, because a fostered animal has not left the system yet. Animals that arrived already dead are in neither half.
Adoptions divided by the animals that entered care — animals already dead on arrival are excluded, because they could never have been adopted. That exclusion RAISES this figure: against every record including them it would read 30.8%. Both are shown so the choice of denominator can be checked rather than trusted.
Compared with 2024-2025, intake is +5.0% TIMOMAX calc. Reporting periods are the county's fiscal years. A period the county has not finished reporting is shown as it stands and is never scaled up, so a change involving one is a change in what has been reported so far.
- Source
- Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control
- Dataset
- Animal Care PawStats Data
- Jurisdiction
- County of Los Angeles, California
- County last updated it
- 2026-11-02
- TIMOMAX last read it
- 2026-11-05 14:00 UTC
- Limitations
- Animals with no outcome recorded yet are counted in intake and excluded from outcome totals.
What happened to the animals in 2025-2026
Each animal appears once. Animals that arrived already dead are kept out of this bar entirely — they never entered care, and folding them in would make the shelter’s record look far worse than it is. They are counted separately below.
| What happened | AnimalsCounty reported | Counted as |
|---|---|---|
| AdoptedTIMOMAX reading Foster-to-adopt. Read as a completed adoption because the second word is ADOPT. If the county states otherwise it becomes foster - 425 records moving between two live categories, which does not change the live release rate either way. | 15,750 | Left the shelter alive |
| Euthanised in care | 11,392 | Died in the shelter's care |
| Went to a rescue group | 6,548 | Left the shelter alive |
| Returned to owner | 3,490 | Left the shelter alive |
| Transferred to another agencyTIMOMAX reading Read as an internal transfer between the county's own care centres. Counted as transfer_out so it can never be mistaken for an adoption, but it is very likely a movement within one agency rather than a placement with another. Flagged for confirmation with Animal Care and Control. | 1,778 | Left the shelter alive |
| In a foster home | 1,475 | Not yet a final outcome — left out of the rate |
| Another live outcomeTIMOMAX reading The code is undefined by the county. Its grouping establishes a live outcome and it is recorded as one. Deliberately NOT read as 'return to owner' despite the letters - the county spells that RTO, and guessing here would move 2,944 animals into a category the publisher did not put them in. The county does not expand the code. Its own grouping establishes it as a live outcome, so it is recorded as one; what specifically it means is not claimed. | 571 | Left the shelter alive |
| Died in care | 366 | Died in the shelter's care |
| Outcome not recordedTIMOMAX reading The county cannot say what became of the animal. Excluded from every rate in both directions - counting it as a live release would credit the shelter for an animal it lost, and counting it as a death would blame it for one it may not have. The animal was alive when last seen and is not in anyone's care. It is neither a placement nor a death, so it is excluded from the rate in both directions rather than being credited as a live release. Shelter Animals Count treats escapes the same way. | 79 | The county did not record an outcome — left out of the rate |
Not an outcome. These animals were already dead when they reached the shelter — most are picked up from roads. They never entered care, so TIMOMAX never adds them to either figure beside them, and never to euthanasia.
- Source
- Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control
- Dataset
- Animal Care PawStats Data
- Jurisdiction
- County of Los Angeles, California
- County last updated it
- 2026-11-02
- TIMOMAX last read it
- 2026-11-05 14:00 UTC
- Limitations
- The county records animals that arrived deceased twice — once at intake, once at disposition — and the two counts differ slightly. Both are shown, labelled.
Where the animals came from in 2025-2026
| How the animal arrived | AnimalsCounty reported | The county's own codes |
|---|---|---|
| Stray | 24,207 | INTAKE_TYPE_GROUP = STRAY |
| Owner surrender | 11,397 | INTAKE_TYPE_GROUP = OWNER SUR |
| Deceased on arrival | 9,646 | INTAKE_TYPE_GROUP = DECEASED |
| Other intake | 3,026 | INTAKE_TYPE_GROUP = OTHER |
By species County
- Source
- Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control
- Dataset
- Animal Care PawStats Data
- Jurisdiction
- County of Los Angeles, California
- County last updated it
- 2026-11-02
- TIMOMAX last read it
- 2026-11-05 14:00 UTC
- Limitations
- Species is recorded when an animal arrives. The county publishes no species breakdown of outcomes.
Over time
Every reporting year the county publishes, including four early years that hold only a handful of records. They are drawn at their true size rather than hidden, which is why they appear as hairlines.
Animals taken in each year County
Share that left the shelter alive TIMOMAX calc
Drawn on its own scale rather than sharing an axis with the counts above — the two measure different things, and a crossing point between them would mean nothing. Years the county cannot support a rate for are gaps in the line, not zeroes.
Left off this line, and why: 2007-2008 — the county records so few animals that the true rate could be anywhere from 0.0% to 79.3%; 2019-2020 — the county records so few animals that the true rate could be anywhere from 34.2% to 100.0%. TIMOMAX plots a year only when its rate is known precisely enough to mean something: a year is plotted when its 95% confidence interval is no wider than 10 percentage points either side. Every year is in the table below with its own range, so nothing is withheld except the false impression of precision.
| Year | Taken in | Outcomes recorded | Left alive | 95% range | Counted in that rate | Euthanised | Died in care | Arrived deceased |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-2008 | Not reported | 1 | 0.0% | 0.0–79.3% | 1 | 1 | Not reported | Not reported |
| 2010-2011 | 1 | Not reported | Not calculable | Not calculable | None | Not reported | Not reported | Not reported |
| 2016-2017 | 2 | 1 | Not calculable | Not calculable | None | Not reported | Not reported | Not reported |
| 2017-2018 | 5 | Not reported | Not calculable | Not calculable | None | Not reported | Not reported | Not reported |
| 2018-2019 | 18 | Not reported | Not calculable | Not calculable | None | Not reported | Not reported | 1 |
| 2019-2020 | 847 | 2 | 100.0% | 34.2–100.0% | 2 | Not reported | Not reported | 5 |
| 2020-2021 | 36,482 | 35,964 | 72.6% | 72.1–73.2% | 24,153 | 6,271 | 335 | 11,229 |
| 2021-2022 | 40,499 | 40,652 | 74.0% | 73.5–74.5% | 29,165 | 7,196 | 392 | 10,254 |
| 2022-2023 | 43,177 | 42,907 | 69.6% | 69.1–70.1% | 32,040 | 9,381 | 346 | 9,756 |
| 2023-2024 | 46,886 | 46,771 | 69.4% | 68.9–69.9% | 35,019 | 10,325 | 392 | 10,424 |
| 2024-2025 | 48,531 | 48,334 | 74.0% | 73.6–74.5% | 36,350 | 9,123 | 318 | 10,376 |
| 2025-2026 | 50,957 | 51,101 | 70.5% | 70.1–71.0% | 39,895 | 11,392 | 366 | 9,646 |
| 2026-2027 | 15,686 | 15,788 | 73.5% | 72.7–74.3% | 12,233 | 3,109 | 130 | 3,030 |
“Left alive”, its 95% range and “counted in that rate” are TIMOMAX calculations; every other column is a count the county reported. The range is a Wilson confidence interval — the band the true rate is very likely to fall in, given how many animals the year holds. It is printed because a rate alone misleads at the edges: a year holding two animals shows a perfect score and a range running from roughly a third of them to all of them, which is the honest reading of two animals.
- Source
- Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control
- Dataset
- Animal Care PawStats Data
- Jurisdiction
- County of Los Angeles, California
- County last updated it
- 2026-11-02
- TIMOMAX last read it
- 2026-11-05 14:00 UTC
- Limitations
- Years are the county's own fiscal years. A year the county has not finished reporting is shown as it stands and is never scaled up.
How TIMOMAX read the county's codes
The county files each animal under a short code. TIMOMAX groups those codes into categories a reader can use, and publishes the mapping so it can be argued with. Where a code is undocumented and TIMOMAX has interpreted it, the category is marked TIMOMAX reading above and the reasoning is printed beside it.
| TIMOMAX category | The county’s own codes |
|---|---|
| adoption | ADOPTION · FOST ADOPT |
| deceased on arrival | DECEASED |
| died in care | DIED |
| euthanasia | EUTH |
| foster | FOSTER |
| other intake | OTHER |
| other live | RTC · RTN |
| owner surrender | OWNER SUR |
| received deceased disposition | DEAD · DISPOSAL |
| rescue | ASPCAPW · ASPCATRANS · CLOSE2HOME · RESCUE · WILD RESCUE |
| return to owner | RTO · RTO FLD ID · RTO FLDMIC · RTO MICRO |
| stray | STRAY |
| transfer out | TRANSFER · TRANS_EXT · TRANS_INT |
| unknown outcome | ESCAPED · MISSING · UNK9999999 |
The analyst view of the same data carries the definitions, the exclusions and the comparability rules in full.
This page can show what happened to the animals but not what the county spent doing it. Los Angeles County publishes its adopted budget and its open financial data, and neither is ingested yet, so TIMOMAX shows no figure for animal-services funding rather than an estimate. Until they are connected, questions like cost per animal or spending per outcome cannot be answered here, and TIMOMAX will not answer them from a national average or a neighbouring county.
2 datasets would fill this. Each is named below with its publisher and the exact step that connects it.
- Requires external serviceCounty · County of Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles County open data portal
County of Los Angeles · Socrata Open Data API · updates not stated by the publisher
Not yet confirmed against the publisher: the portal domain, the dataset identifier, the column mapping, the licence, the update cadence.
How this is obtainedConfirm the county's current open-data domain first — it has moved between hosts — then locate the budget or expenditure dataset and record its identifier. If the county publishes only the CEO's adopted budget workbook, register that as a separate xlsx source with its own file URL.
GET https://data.lacounty.gov/api/views/{four-by-four}.jsonNo credential is required to read this publisher.
Open County of Los Angeles's own page
Until it is connected TIMOMAX shows nothing here. It does not show a zero, an example row or a projection, because a figure this product cannot check is a figure it has no business printing.
- Requires external serviceCounty · Counties publishing only a workbook
Adopted budget workbook (XLSX)
The individual county's budget office · Excel workbook · updates annual
Not yet confirmed against the publisher: the file URL, the column mapping, the licence.
How this is obtainedThis is a template rather than a single dataset. Each county is registered separately: record the county's own budget page, the direct workbook URL for the current cycle, the sheet holding the departmental detail, the header row, and the column names. A workbook cannot be mapped without opening it.
No credential is required to read this publisher.
Open The individual county's budget office's own page
Until it is connected TIMOMAX shows nothing here. It does not show a zero, an example row or a projection, because a figure this product cannot check is a figure it has no business printing.