Dr. Gary Michelson of Found Animals Foundation tells a "story" about microchips
In the age of the Internet with facts and evidence only a click away you would think people would not lie so boldly. Not so it seems. Dr. Gary Michelson said he thought of donating microchips to animal shelters all by himself. No, he didn't. The free microchips were the idea of Dave Loftus who was the Director of the Foundation. Below is Dr. Gary Michelson's story.
I worked for the Foundation during this time. I did not sign a confidentiality agreement. There is no gag order. Dr. Gary Michelson has a long history of telling stories. This is but one below.
"A lifelong animal lover, Dr. Michelson had watched in horror as images of displaced pets flashed across the television screen. The initial tragedy of Katrina had been terrible enough; how could the aftermath be so grueling? Although animal welfare agencies labored tirelessly to help affected pets, the infrastructure for large-scale pet identification and return simply did not exist.
However, Dr. Michelson knew of a technology that could help: microchips. Michelson consulted with his local animal control agency, and found that the Los Angeles County shelter system did not currently offer microchipping! So, he created created a non-profit called Found Animals Foundation and began donating microchips to the County shelters and the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority (SEAACA)."
Dr. Gary Michelson says he started the Foundation because of Katrina. That's not quite true. The corporation was formed December 2005. December 18, 2005 I believe there was a meeting at Kathleen Riordan's house. I was there and recorded the meeting on DVD. Dr. Gary Michelson also had someone filming the movie. He was going to make a documentary about how he, the brilliant inventor would make Los Angeles the first no-kill city in the US. I totally believed he could do this at the time. I was very happy to be a part of it.
The Mayor's office invited the people to the party. It was to meet Ed Boks and listen to Dr. Gary Michelson. Dr. Gary Michelson and Dave Loftus of the Found Animals Foundation were at this meeting. Dr. Gary Michelson talked about spay neuter. He didn't mention chips. He didn't mention Katrina. Katrina hit August 25, 2005. The true devastation wasn't noted until days later or longer. Dr. Gary Michelson's first donations as per his tax return was buying two tickets to Sherry Hackett's comedy event. That's not even a donation. He got something in return. I have this tax return.
The Mayor's office invited the people to the party. It was to meet Ed Boks and listen to Dr. Gary Michelson. Dr. Gary Michelson and Dave Loftus of the Found Animals Foundation were at this meeting. Dr. Gary Michelson talked about spay neuter. He didn't mention chips. He didn't mention Katrina. Katrina hit August 25, 2005. The true devastation wasn't noted until days later or longer. Dr. Gary Michelson's first donations as per his tax return was buying two tickets to Sherry Hackett's comedy event. That's not even a donation. He got something in return. I have this tax return.
In fact if you read other articles this is the first time Dr. Gary Michelson mentions Katrina. He originally said he started this foundation for animals and another for back conditions because of his love of animals and his grandmother who had back problems.
I'm sure everyone knows this. Dr. Gary Michelson read the Newsweek article that supposedly Ed Boks, Edward Boks wrote. I personally believe Matthew Scully ghost wrote that article because he was going to ghost write another article for Ed Boks but Ed didn't have $2,500. Ed asked me for $2,500 to pay Matthew Scully and I said no. I have those emails. That article made it seem like Ed Boks had made shelters nokill when he didn't. Euthanasia actually went up his first year at each shelter, i.e. Arizona, New York, Los Angeles. He was fired from all three shelters. His later years he'd get ahold of the books and fudged the numbers, refused animals, let them die from disease... There are many articles about this.
Because of the article Dr. Gary Michelson wanted him to run Los Angeles Animal Services. He automatically believed the bullshit without doing any research. He contacted Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and offered him money to hire Ed Boks. The Mayor agreed to hire Ed Boks. Anyway the meeting was to introduce Ed Boks who would be the new GM officially January 3, 2006. Here's a background story about this relationship. Also note that Dr. Gary Michelson was sued for defamation and had to settle. He most certainly defamed Dave Loftus. Dr. Gary Michelson didn't just defame him at dinner parties either. Dr. Gary Michelson called up Dave Loftus' business partners and defamed him directly hurting his business. Dr. Gary Michleson is a very petty scary vindictive man. He's done much worse to others especially his partners in the tree farming business.
More from Dr.Gary Michelson's story,
"At that point, the foundation consisted of Dr. Michelson sitting at his kitchen table, writing checks for chips. Found Animals’ donated microchips made free pet ID available to all pets in the LA area, forwarding the foundation’s overall goal to reduce unnecessary shelter deaths. The logic was simple: get lost pets out of the shelters and back with their families, and they won’t be put down for lack of space."
At the time it wasn't just Dr. Gary Michelson. It was Dr. Gary Michelson, Dave Loftus, Mary Herro and me sitting at his kitchen table. Dr. Gary Michelson totally forgets about Dave Loftus. Chips were his idea. He bought the chips and sold them to the Foundation. Dr. Gary Michelson agreed to this. He bought chips from Dave Loftus. Dr. Gary Michelson also bought his pet kiosk company. Then Dr. Gary Michelson got cold feet because people said chips and kiosks are not a cost effective way to save animals' lives. Gary felt bad about not doing his research into the effectiveness of chips and kiosks. He wanted his money back. Dave Loftus said no of course because they had an agreement and the deal was done.
Dr. Gary Michelson then starts defaming Dave Loftus making up horrible lies such as he's wanted by the police, he embezzled money, he stole money.... I worked for Dr. Gary Michelson at the time under Dave Loftus and believed what he said. I stupidly would tell Dr. Gary Michelson where Dave would be so the police could arrest him. Dr. Gary Michelson also defamed me. I was going to sue him and use the same attorney Dave Loftus did but that attorney said Dr. Gary Michelson and his lawyers are ruthless. He didn't want to go through that experience again even though they got a good settlement.
The police were never going to arrest Dave because he didn't do anything illegal or wrong. Dr. Gary Michelson just got buyer's remorse and wanted to unwind the deal. Dr. Gary Michelson begged Ed Boks and the Mayor to order the police to arrest Dave. LAPD told the Mayor there was no crime. They can't arrest him. LAPD said that Dr. Gary Michelson is mentally ill, crazy. I have all of those emails from the Mayor's office and Ed Boks. Ed Boks also said Dr. Gary Michelson was crazy.
Back to Dr. Gary Michelson's story. Dr. Gary Michelson asked the owner of Chameleon, PetHarbor if microchips or pet kiosks were effective at saving animals. You would think he'd ask these questions before he bought the chips and kiosks. The owner of Chameleon said no because people don't register the chips, don't keep the information current, there are many types of chips and scanners, not all shelters scan for chips... He also said the kiosks don't work and he sold the kiosks. He was honest with Gary. Dr. Gary Michelson felt really stupid for buying chips and kiosks. More from his article,
"Easy fix, right?
Surprisingly, no.
Despite millions of dollars in donated ID, shelter pets were still dying by the thousands. Most baffling, local shelters saw no significant change in return-to-owner rates! Free microchips alone were obviously not doing the job."
He admits he failed with the chips. It's funny how he's trying to turn his poor decision to buy chips into something positive. Back to his statement.
"so in 2008, Dr. Michelson recruited former BCG consultant and Stanford MBA Aimee Gilbreath, and they started to dig into the microchip system failure. The team uncovered some pretty scary facts:"
First off, after Dave Loftus and Dr. Gary Michelson parted ways Dr. Gary Michelson had an idea. He wanted to hire someone WITH ABSOLUTELY NO ANIMAL EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER to run his Foundation. He wanted someone with a business or financial degree only. He thought a numbers, money person could solve this problem. He thought people who loved animals were blinded which is odd coming from someone who says he loves animals.
Obviously hiring Aimee Gilbreath was not the best idea. She has made some whopper mistakes because she has no animal experience. She's had to waste time learning through trial and error while animals died and money was wasted. Aimee Gilbreath wrote an article saying you can leave your cat alone for three days. Not only is that wrong but it's illegal. Aime Gilbreath dressed up kittens in dresses to make them "more adoptable." The kittens just laid on their sides confused. I saved the posts and photos. I could go on but back to Dr. Gary Michelson's statement.
Obviously hiring Aimee Gilbreath was not the best idea. She has made some whopper mistakes because she has no animal experience. She's had to waste time learning through trial and error while animals died and money was wasted. Aimee Gilbreath wrote an article saying you can leave your cat alone for three days. Not only is that wrong but it's illegal. Aime Gilbreath dressed up kittens in dresses to make them "more adoptable." The kittens just laid on their sides confused. I saved the posts and photos. I could go on but back to Dr. Gary Michelson's statement.
"1) Although microchips must be registered to work, most pet owners never register their microchips!This means that shelters and vets who find a chip have no way to contact the pet’s family.
2) Since most microchip companies charge fees to register and/or update information, many records become outdated when pet owners can’t pay.
3) Some microchip companies sell nonstandard microchips and non-universal scanners that can’t read all types of chips … so even when a chip is registered and updated, there’s no guarantee it will be picked up by the shelter or vet.
Clearly, the microchip system was not living up to its potential. Dr. Michelson was forced to ask himself the same question millions of pet owners pose each day: is microchipping pets really worth it?
The foundation was quickly expanding to include other lifesaving programs: pet adoption promotions for area shelters, leadership support for high volume spay and neuter providers, and the Michelson Prize and Grants, a prize philanthropy grant program promising $75 million in award and research funding to develop a safe, nonsurgical sterilant for cats and dogs. So, pouring money into a broken microchip system wasn’t helping anyone.
If we really wanted microchips to work, we would need to take matters into our own paws.
That’s when Found Animals began designing a registry that would allow all U.S. pet owners to maintainfree, lifetime registrations for their microchipped pets, and automate communications for shelters. Our microchip donations expanded to include AngelDogs Foundation, Spay4LA, and SNP-LA, and the Santa Fe Humane Society, and those organizations provided valuable feedback as our registry blossomed. After testing the system with our partners, in March of 2012, we launched the Found Animals Microchip Registry nationwide, and began traveling around the country educating shelters and vets on registration and the importance of microchip and scanner standards."
ALL of us knew this in the year 2000 if not earlier. We spoke about these issues at commission meetings. Check the minutes. Dr. Gary Michelson come lately here also knew this in February 2006. It's seven years later. While I'm happy he made the national registry, I don't know if it's working. I have no idea if people are using it. He would need all the chip companies to give him the data from all their chips and they won't do that. They sell that data to advertisers. I bet Dr. Gary Michelson will use that data he collects to sell to advertisers. Confirmed via his own terms of services. He sells your data to advertisers and others. https://microchipregistry.foundanimals.org/termsandconditionsphp.php?language=en He talked about doing that in 2006. He wanted the data that would be inputted from the chips. City, County said they couldn't give him that data. Looks like he's getting that data now.
Here's yet another problem with microchips. All animals adopted from shelters are now chipped. Even when a stray animal is found, it has a chip, data is current, we call the owner, they say they don't want the animal. They even lie and say they're not the owner. If they were, they'd have to pay to dump their animal.
If someone really cared about their animal they'd have a chip and collar with tags. A collar and tags is the best way to reunite wanted pets with their owners. A microchip will not automatically make people responsible. I volunteered at the shelter and saw animals with chips being put down because owner said he didn't want the animal. I'd see owners bring in their own animal with a chip and dump them. Chips can't save animals. Only humans can save animals.
The absolute best way to find your lost pet is to not lose it in the first place. Don't let your cat outside. Make sure your dog is on a leash or in a secure yard. I have never lost a pet and had to go looking for it because I'm responsible. Of course Dr. Gary Michelson lets his un-neutered dog roam the neighborhood. He's also received a slew of off leash dog tickets from the police but that's a story for another time.
Mary Cummins of Animal Advocates is a wildlife rehabilitator licensed by the California Department of Fish and Game and the USDA. Mary Cummins is also a licensed real estate appraiser in Los Angeles, California.
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