New Santee Animal Shelter Opens. Bonita-Sunnyside Residents Left in the Lurch.
Santee opened their new animal care facility. You can see how wonderful it is in the video above. Downside—they closed our Bonita Animal Shelter.
What are Bonita-Sunnyside residents to do?
"To be left in the lurch means to be abandoned, deserted, or left without help or support in a difficult, awkward, or critical situation when you expected or needed assistance."
What are we to do with all the liberated animals running around on a weekly or even daily basis? This is a rural community with many people owning dogs, cats, goats, pigs, sheep, chickens, cows, llamas, alpacas, donkeys and horses. They escape sometimes.
This weekend there was a loose pig running around the neighborhood. No one bothered to capture it. How can you capture a pig and transport it to Santee? Do you hog tie it? A frightened pig in your car for the twenty-three minute drive? What a mess that would be!
If not captured, they could be hit by a car or eaten by a pack of coyotes. Then there would be dead animal guts everywhere and scavengers coming in by the dozens to eat the remains. That's a gory image I don't want to see. Not in our Beautiful Bonita.
Maybe we could have wild pigs roaming the area like the wild Javelinas that took over some Arizona neighborhoods. (You don't want to encounter one of those while walking your dog.)
Possibly groups of goats or sheep or cows wandering the streets, that would surely slow the toll-avoidance traffic!
Where's the County's responsibility in all this? They just lock the local animal care facility and never look back?
Just because a new facility is built, they shut down the old one?
Could we not keep our "old" animal care facility? Maybe on a smaller scale with just a few employees but definitely someone to accept animals or come pick them up.
I was told by a planning board member that they would send a vehicle from Santee for an animal. What if they pick up an animal and drive it to Santee only to then have to return for another animal and then another and another. The Animal Control said that scenario wasn't happening.
Years ago, when the Coronado Animal Control was temporarily shut down, the animals were caged in the underground parking lot of the police station. I went to visit them and wrote a story about it. It was pretty desolate for those poor animals.
Maybe the Sheriff's Department would come wrestle our wild beasts. They could be stored at the Imperial Beach station!
Or we have rangers! Yea, that's the ticket! The park rangers could pick them up. They could build large enclosures for each ilk of animal and keep them at Rohr Park . . . maybe on one of those grassy soccer fields. Then the children from all over could come see them . . . like a mini-zoo!
The County could just reclaim part of Rohr Park that they gave away to the City of Chula Vista!
There's been three sets of keys hanging on the message board near the horse arena at Rohr Park. This is the third time I've posted them. If you can't find your keys, how will you ever find your pet?
All fun aside, I propose that the County consider leaving us our animal shelter in place with a small staff. Maybe spruce it up a bit. What do you think?
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Written by Susan Heavilin | October 27, 2026 | Sunnyside Common Sense
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