The Milo Foundation’s experiment on Solano Avenue is over, but the group hopes to stay in the East Bay.
The Milo Pet Adoption Store on Solano Avenue didn’t quite fit in with its neighbors. Unlike the rows of quiet homes and shops, Milo was alive with barks and meows, a cacophony of homeless dogs and cats waiting to be adopted. But the shop will soon fall silent, because the same hustle and bustle that endeared Milo to pet owners drove some neighbors wild. And after months of friction, contentious city council meetings, and even a failed zoning board arbitration, Milo is calling it quits. For now, the foundation is back where it started, an itinerant operation.
The brainchild of Lynne Tingle, Milo is a nonprofit no-kill animal adoption foundation based on more than 280 acres in rural Mendocino County; the operation has found homes for more than 10,000 dogs and cats over the last 12 years through roving adoption fairs around the Bay Area. The Solano store was Milo’s first bold step toward creating a permanent foothold in the Bay Area, a stab at launching something new that combined the inviting feel of a pet store with the sensibilities of a shelter.
Mobile adoptions were popular and successful, but the long commute back to the Milo sanctuary three hours north wore on both staff and animals.
“The initial response far exceeded anything we’d expected,” says Anita Mascoli, Milo’s director of development, recalling the heady first days of the store last year. “When we opened the doors, there was literally standing room only.”
Far down Solano Avenue, away from the crowded movie theaters and bustling clothing boutiques and a block from the Berkeley-Albany border, the Milo store exists on a more modest block of the avenue. Here, stores like Gathering Tribes and the Bone Room sell native jewelry and fossilized oddities. Lola’s restaurant serves hot pizza to a subdued lunchtime crowd. Milo’s gray brick storefront still has the look of a new arrival not yet settled in—above the bright orange awning, a temporary cloth sign announces “Milo Pet Adoption.” Above that, another sign announces “For Sale.” Photos of dogs and cats available for adoption plaster the front display window; inside, a fluffy black-and-white cat watches passersby through languid green eyes.
Run by Tingle and a cadre of animal lovers, Milo took the idea of pet adoption to another level—something that the SPCA and city shelters, with their no-frills facilities and focus on moving as many animals as possible, just don’t do.
“Unlike a shelter, which can look and feel like an animal prison, no matter how good the facilities, Milo tried to create a pleasant space in which to showcase pets—like a pet store, only with rescues rather than animals for sale,” says Eden Halbert, a professional dog trainer from San Francisco. “And unlike adoption fairs, which move from place to place or are only available during limited hours, the Solano space made it easier to reach potential adopters by making it more convenient.”
As a mobile adoption unit, setting up temporary weekend fairs across the greater Bay Area, Milo earned itself a reputation for doing more than just placing animals in homes; they placed dogs in the right homes for them.
Stephanie Carlos of San Francisco adopted her huge yellow Labrador, Bobby Jr., just two months ago from Milo’s Solano shop after she’d heard friends and neighbors praise Milo dogs.
“They gave me a lot of time with Bobby, to just walk around with him and get to know him,” says Carlos. At first, Milo volunteers were strangely discouraging, telling Carlos that Bobby wasn’t really the perfect dog. But, after spending some time with the canine, Carlos was adamant.
“Apparently some news station had done a piece on Milo, and Bobby was featured on a TV segment,” she says. “They were trying to weed out the people who just wanted him because he’d been on television. You can tell that they really care about what they’re doing. They’re not trying to stick dogs with just anyone; they’re trying to place them into families.”
Tingle knew that the store had to be more than just an adoption showroom; she had planned to have a 24-hour caregivers’ unit in the back. When Milo applied for a change-of-use permit from the city of Berkeley, that’s when the trouble began.
“That’s what got us off on the wrong foot with the neighbors,” says Mascoli. “At one point, the hearing on whether to issue the permit got postponed, but I guess the neighbors didn’t get notified in time. Some got the idea from this that Milo and the city were in cahoots, trying to push things through without any public input.”
Since Milo was a hybrid—not quite a pet store, but not quite an animal shelter—the city wasn’t entirely sure how to treat the organization.
Milo was dealt a double whammy in fall 2005 after many staff members left to assist in rescue efforts following Hurricane Katrina, and more refugee pets began to pour into the shelter from Louisiana and Mississippi.
Even some Milo sympathizers felt the store was getting out of control.
“When they opened the store, we were excited for them,” says Peter Merholz, a Milo volunteer who has fostered 10 to 15 Milo dogs since 2002. “It seemedlike a smart move, and would help them better integrate in the community. Then Hurricane Katrina happened. And I suspect Katrina really got to the organizers, because the number of dogs skyrocketed. The store began resembling a kennel, with dogs everywhere, barking and carrying on, and it was generally a scene of chaos. And we hated going into the store, because it was loud, smelly and agitating.”
According to Mascoli, Milo usually housed eight to 15 dogs during the day, and 15 to 25 cats.
“Milo suffers from what many, if not most, small nonprofits suffer from; it is staffed by a cadre of well-meaning individuals with no operational experience,” says Merholz. “And such things are fine at a small scale, but when operations grow, such a lack of organizational know-how creates untenable situations.”
Nicole Hogarty, who adopted her chow/shar-pei/lab mix, Audrey, from Milo’s mobile adoption unit, says she can understand frustration from neighbors, but thinks it’s sad people can’t look past single incidents to the greater good done by an agency that helps homeless pets find homes instead of being killed. “I’d be willing to hear occasional barks, just to know the shelter was there helping animals live,” says Hogarty.
Some neighbors agree. In a letter to Milo, Josepha Schiffman and John Ewing wrote, “Sometimes [we’re] embarrassed to live in Berkeley where we’re so clear on what should be done halfway around the world in Iraq or Sarajevo, but we can be so mean-spirited with those we live next to; [we] will miss the joy you’ve brought to the neighborhood.”
But other neighbors say that the store produced a lot more than occasional barks—and that they’re being unfairly demonized just for wanting a bit of peace and quiet.
“No one’s denying that they have a good cause,” says Jane Tierney, a Solano neighborhood resident who lives a few houses down from the Milo store. “But they think that saving animals is a valid excuse for anything. We’re talking about a year and a half of very intense housing of dogs.” Neighbors objected to the noise of Milo dogs barking in a residential area that wasn’t zoned for animal shelters. It became especially bad during the summer heat when everyone had their windows open.
Tierney also worried that Milo animals were a threat to public health and hygiene. Milo volunteers would walk “strange dogs” through the neighborhood, and Tierney blamed them for infecting her own dog with a case of kennel cough. Tierney also says that during the day Milo would keep dogs in a fenced-off alleyway between the buildings, and volunteers had a habit of hosing feces down into the sewers. Mascoli says that Milo had used the alley as a romp area for dogs, but had discontinued when it became apparent that there wasn’t adequate drainage.
“In Mendocino County, they had 200 acres of ranch land for animals,” says Tierney. “And they thought they could just come down to the middle of the city, without changing at all, and there wouldn’t be any problems.”
In frustration, Tierney and other Solano residents banded together to form the Solano Avenue Neighborhood Association to get Milo to change their practices.
Berkeley City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque finally came to a decision on how to classify Milo, finding that it was a kennel. That was the final blow for the beleaguered operation—city zoning didn’t allow for animal kennels on Solano Avenue and Milo didn’t have the time or money to fight for another protracted battle to get an exception to the rule.
“It was just taking a huge toll on our operation,” says Mascoli. “As a nonprofit, we just couldn’t afford that…if we couldn’t even do our operation there.”
The property has increased in value in the short time that Milo has owned it, so the group won’t be in dire straits when they vacate in June. Mascoli says the foundation is currently looking for a new home somewhere in the East Bay; they’d like to stay in Berkeley, but they’re also considering spaces in Emeryville, Richmond and San Rafael.
“This has been really hard on my animal rescue colleagues,” says Mascoli. “But this is a business where you get used to disappointment. Once we heard that there was this beautiful sheltie-mix down in a shelter in Manteca, so we drove all the way out there only to find out it had been euthanized right before we arrived. That’s the sort of thing that really makes you sad. So on the scale of disappointment, having to move is really not that bad at all.”
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Mike Rosen-Molina is a frequent contributor to The Monthly, whose work has also appeared in the East Bay Express, San Francisco Chronicle and Fairfield Daily Republic. He lives with an ever-increasing number of pet rats and chinchillas.