Top photo was the inside of a truck cage when we started putting this blue mat material into all the animal cages. It all started when a probationary ACO had picked up several dogs in the summertime. A very hot summer day, she was in a brown truck and the cages only had the manufacturers installed vent fans and nothing but bare metal as the cage floor. We were supposed to 'water down' the animals to keep them cool. When she got to the shelter later that afternoon, one of the dogs was in really bad shape from being basically cooked in the cage. It had burns on its feet and stomach from being on the hot metal cage floor, the heat from the catalytic converter underneath it didn't help, where else could it go?, and from just being inside the hot cage it was overheated and so it had to be taken to a vet for treatment.
When it got out to the local humane society the you know what hit the fan!!! Unfortunately for the girl, since she was still on probation she was fired for not checking up on the animals in her care. Shortly after this incident, and with the help of the humane society, the county started to install water cooled air conditioners on every trucks cage. For the inside this matting was bought, in large rolls, and cut to fit for each cage in every truck. This kept the animals off the metal floor yet could be easily taken out to hose clean the hair, poop and throw up that almost always happened with dogs and cats.
Above is a photo from 2004 or so, with Stacy driving and me going with her on a callback on a weekend. This truck was a 1/2 ton Ford and was called the "ice cream" truck because it looked so much like one! Very short cage box it only had 4 cages in the sides and in those big back doors was just a long box for dead animals. It wasn't well liked since it was a desert only truck and since the Apple Valley shelter was so far away, one couldn't carry that many animals and it was often necessary to make multiple trips to the shelter. From our area it was a 35 to 45 minute drive to the shelter! They would have been small for even the valley but they would have worked so much better there then in the expanse of the deserts. Nobody would ever listen to common sense though!!
A late 1980's morning at the County Yards and two fellow ACO' s are visiting before heading out for the day. Guy on the left is now long gone and moved on. The guy on the right is still there. Has no hair now!
Last photo is from about the same time frame, several people meeting before we went out to pick up some large animals. At the parking lot in Fontana near Valley and Sierra, I'm pretty sure a restaurant sits where these trucks were way back then.
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