The sprawling landscape of Miranda’s Rescue is open and green, with horse paddocks, barns and white fencing. Outdoor kennels are lined up in squares around grassy expanses. The rescue, which includes president and founder Shannon Miranda’s private residence, encompasses 50 acres of Fortuna farmland, some 20 to 30 acres of it usable, and a good deal of it river bar. There are kennels for 60 dogs, capacity for 100 cats, fenced fields for horses, goats and other large animals, and cages for birds both domestic and exotic. It is a fair approximation of the farm parents tell their children a beloved pet has gone to live on rather than admitting it has died.
But the disinterring of eight dogs, some with apparent gunshot wounds to their heads, on Miranda’s Rescue property by animal rescue operator Jenna Moore and spay and neuter clinic founder Jennifer Raymond (the latter of whom purchased the property next door to Miranda’s Rescue to monitor it) has rocked the image of the nonprofit. On May 1, Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office investigators bearing a search warrant seized records, a phone, iPad, laptop, guns and ammunition as possible evidence of animal cruelty and defrauding the shelters that transferred dogs to Miranda’s Rescue to be cared for and adopted out, instead putting the animals to death to make room for more.
The investigation is ongoing and as the Journal went to press June 23, the sheriff’s office was conducting a second search warrant operation at Miranda’s Rescue, including “the excavation of the property in an effort to locate additional deceased animals believed to be buried on site.”
According to an HCSO press release, the search is, “Based on the large number of animals that remain unaccounted.” The excavation, it states, is being carried out with assistance from, “Members of the Cal Poly Humboldt Anthropology Department, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and private forensic veterinarians.” The release also states the sheriff’s office is working with the “FBI, California Department of Justice, United States Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, California Attorney General’s Office and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.”
Video from the scene shows an excavator pushing through the ground and vegetation at one edge of the dirt-covered patch where Miranda buried at least eight dogs. At the other end of the already flattened expanse, a pair of people were operating ground-penetrating radar equipment.
When Sabrina Woods visited Miranda’s Rescue with a dog from the Solano County Animal Shelter in September of 2025, the approach was idyllic, and she was looking forward to finally seeing the place. She hoped to see some of the dogs she’d cared for as a shelter volunteer in their new homes, including a 100-pound Siberian husky-German shepherd mix named Kane.
Working remotely in finance on East Coast time allowed Woods to dedicate afternoons to volunteering at the Solano shelter in 2024. She got attached to a few dogs there but fell in love with Kane. “All he wanted to do was cuddle with me,” she says, “laying down in my arms.” A few months in, she learned Kane was going to Miranda’s Rescue. “I was sad, but I was so happy for him that he was gonna go to this rescue and he’d have the opportunity to be adopted,” and have more freedom to move around. Hoping for news he’d been adopted, “I began stalking Miranda’s Rescue’s Facebook page,” she says with a small laugh.
She’d helped raise funds to bring a big red dog named Clifford north to Miranda’s Rescue, even driving him there herself. Founder and operator Shannon Miranda wasn’t available to meet when she arrived, but she was excited to visit and learn about the rescue’s training and other programs. “I was also thinking I was going to see all my dogs,” Woods says, as by then she’d known some 70 dogs that had gone to the Fortuna rescue. “It was just the most disappointing day ever,” she recalls, and it left her sobbing in the car. She saw only one recently transferred dog but thought maybe others were in the rear building to which she didn’t have access. Hearing from staff that Miranda was the only trainer on site didn’t make sense in terms of time requirement.
“That visit made me question their ability to do what everyone said they were doing,” says Woods.
Later that fall, Woods saw a Facebook post from Oakland Animal Services (OAS) stating it had transferred more than 170 dogs. She knew Solano County had sent 126, about 10 a month, and another 170 didn’t sound feasible given Miranda’s Rescue’s kennel capacity and staffing. After looking into the usual timeline for placing dogs in the Humboldt area, she learned it could take months or even a year or more.
“There were a lot of accusations I found online … and you can go down a rabbit hole online,” Woods says. But she put rumors aside, figuring if they were true, something would have been done. Instead, she started making Public Records Act (PRA) requests to shelters to find out which ones were transferring dogs to Miranda’s Rescue and how many. She plugged their responses into an Excel sheet covering 2025.
In the 17 redacted pages she got in response to her PRA request for complaints made to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office about Miranda’s Rescue, she says, “I started recognizing a pattern that he was saying he was euthanizing a dog because it killed something,” either because it escaped a kennel and killed another dog, or that it was adopted and killed a cat or bit a child. “I just kept hearing that over and over again.”
Then Woods got a call from Raymond, Miranda’s now neighbor who had been told by a shelter that the two of them were making similar PRA requests. “We were both doing the exact same things,” says Woods, and seeing the same patterns. The two put their work together, cross referenced and formed one comprehensive document covering 21 shelters and municipalities sending dogs to Miranda’s Rescue from 2020 to 2025.
The May 1 search warrant cites potential animal cruelty not solely because Miranda shot dogs, which he has admitted to doing out of what he claims were safety concerns following five dogs attacking other animals. The last of these attacks, he says, occurred on a day when he had to leave town to see a sick relative and felt he could not risk safety by waiting, but was unable to find a veterinarian to administer euthanasia. Under California law, explains Humboldt County Animal Control Facilities Manager Andre Hale, a private rescue is the owner of an animal and not subject to the same euthanasia requirements as a public shelter or a veterinarian. Therefore, according to law, a rescue can put down an animal with a gun, so long as it is shot in the head for a quick death.
But killing animals “for financial gain and failing to provide the exact services guaranteed to his associate,” as alleged in the May 1 search warrant, could bring charges of fraud and/or cruelty. In the case of a dog named Zora transferred from Oakland Animal Services, allegedly lying to the shelter about her adoption and death, are presented as a suspected example of taking payment for accepting a dog and killing it rather than caring for and adopting the animal out, as agreed upon.
The affidavit lists contracts for animal transfers with the cities of Ferndale, Fortuna and Rio Dell, as well as Oakland Animal Services, Berkeley Animal Services, Contra Costa County, Monterey County’s Hitchcock Road Animal Services and Solano County Animal Care. “In the past year,” it states, “it is estimated that Miranda has received approximately over 600 dogs from various shelters.” Drawing on the documents provided by Raymond, Moore and Woods, the estimated income from those dog transfers, according to the document, comes to approximately $510,000.
As a 501c3 nonprofit, Miranda’s Rescue’s tax forms are available online to the public. Considering not only the entities listed above, but all those listed in the spreadsheet compiled by Woods and Raymond, it’s difficult to see how the numbers fit.
Taxes forms for 2024 filed by treasurer Brian Paris show total revenue at $471,080. This is broken down into the following:
Contributions and grants, $224,247
Program service revenue, $90,545
Other revenue, $156,288
In 2024, Woods and Raymond’s PRA requests to shelters showed a total of 628 dogs transferred to Miranda’s Rescue. The number does not include animals surrendered by individuals, or dogs from the cities of Ferndale, Fortuna and Rio Dell, which pay monthly, not per dog.
Phone calls to Paris were not returned.
Applying the standard minimum transfer fee of $400 per dog, those 628 transfers from shelters would have brought in roughly $251,200.
That total exceeds each of the line items under Miranda’s Rescue’s total revenue. It’s also unclear where the fees for adopting out this many dogs would fit, as Miranda says he’s unable to share adoption numbers contained in records seized by the sheriff’s office. He says he does not have access to copies of those records and that even they may not be accurate.
Asked about the search warrant’s estimate of how many dogs were transferred to Miranda’s Rescue by shelters in 2025, Miranda scoffs and says he feels more than 600 is “a little high.” However, he says it’s possible 500 shelter dogs came through his rescue. Taking into account the 50 or so dogs that went back to shelters, he says he could have plausibly accepted 450 dogs and placed all the adoptable dogs among them. Some weeks, he says with a shrug, 10, 12 or 3 dogs might be adopted out. In total, counting every species, “We adopt out 1,100-1,200 animals a year.”
But even with the seized records returned to him, Miranda confesses he can’t back it up with documentation. “My record keeping is shit,” he says. He says sometimes he was loose with paperwork, allowing people to take a dog and fill out forms later, and admits it’s troubling how loose his record keeping is.
Again, Miranda says he doesn’t have an estimate for how many dogs are dropped off by individuals, though he says most every dog brought in from the cities of Ferndale and Fortuna were “owner redeemed,” meaning returned to their homes.
Documentations of euthanasia are even more scarce as Miranda says he stopped recording them at all in the past year. “Some I did and some I didn’t,” he says, unsure when he stopped recording but guessing probably in the last seven or eight months. He was tired of receiving aggressive dogs, Miranda says, and gave up.
Humboldt Veterinary Medical Group’s Ferndale Veterinary and Fortuna Veterinary are both listed on Miranda’s Rescue’s website as its vets, and, like all such facilities, are required to follow euthanasia protocol and document each case. However, co-owner Jennifer Flores states she is unable to share privileged client medical information, though it’s been “months and months and months,” since the hospital has been asked to make an appointment for the rescue. (Miranda offered to contact Ferndale Veterinary, which he named as his primary vet, to release his records to the Journal, but the office had not received written notification to do so as of press time.)
While describing shooting the dogs found on the rescue property by Moore and Raymond to the Journal, Miranda says, without sharing names, “I’ve had several veterinarians call me and say shooting is more humane than euthanizing [by injection].”
Flores says she’d be surprised to hear any vet take that position.
At both the Ferndale and Fortuna vet offices, Flores explains, dog euthanasia is always carried out by injection of a reliable sedative with the smallest needle possible to send the pet to sleep in a few minutes. This is followed by another injection the pet does not feel, an overdose of anesthesia to stop its heart. The owner or a staffer stays with the pet so it’s never left alone. Before euthanasia, she adds, dogs are offered Hershey’s Kisses the staff call “goodbye kisses,” because, as she says, “Every good dog deserves to eat chocolate before they leave this world.”
In cases where a dog has bitten a person or an animal and the owner is seeking euthanasia, the vet is required to contact Animal Control because rabies is endemic in Humboldt County. Animal Control, Flores says, confers with the county’s Division of Environmental Health, sometimes determining the dog be quarantined for 10 days to see if rabies symptoms develop. Putting down an animal for aggression/attack also requires considering other options, including training, pain medication and possible rehoming, says Flores.
Emergency euthanasia, like emergency care in general, Flores says, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “That’s part of being a practice. You have to have a plan for emergency care.” If it’s midnight, for example, you can call the office and press 9 to be connected to the message service. Staff ask vital questions and send the information to the vet on call, who will respond with an immediate visit or a recommendation to either make an appointment or walk in the following day for urgent care. “There should not be a situation in which you feel like you have to take care of something yourself,” she says, “because we always see emergencies.” But there are limits, as Flores notes, “We don’t perform convenience euthanasias.”
A peacock trailing its tail drifts out of the way as Miranda, in a pair of mirrored wrap-around sunglasses, steers the dusty, red Rhino ATV along the path through the rescue grounds. Miranda points to a pen beside the fence, where Barbara the water buffalo stands 15 feet from an upturned trough. “And she is mean,” he says, joking that he wishes Raymond had entered the property into Barbara’s pen the night she cut through a hole in the fence and started digging.
Tall grass and weeds come up over the windshield, dense enough to obscure the view of the overgrown hedge through which Raymond first entered the property, and the chain link fence beneath it that she cut through. Miranda points to where the hole in the fence is boarded over with plywood. He turns the ATV in an arc around the mounds of dirt he says have been mistaken for mass animal graves but are actually Caltrans project leftovers he hoped to use to flatten the area where he planned to build a “canine castle” structure. All but a few loads have to go back, he explains, since he didn’t have a grading permit, but he was allowed to spread the remainder. That’s not to say there are no animals beneath the thick vegetation, Miranda says, as he’s buried horses, pets and livestock that die on the property as a matter of practice, as well as animals he’s buried for people who live in cities.
Climbing out of the ATV, every step sends up the scent of the crushed mint underfoot for a few feet until the greenery gives way to the edge of the dirt-covered section of the field. This, Miranda says, is where he buried the eight dogs that Raymond and Moore dug up in the dark on April 26. Weeks later, the earth still isn’t quite packed, despite tire tracks running across it.
Miranda says he typically gives aggressive dogs a few days to see if they can be worked with before calling the veterinarian for euthanasia. “But sometimes I had to,” he says, turning mainly to Ferndale Veterinary and Riverwalk Veterinary Hospital until it closed. As for Ferndale Veterinary not being asked for appointments in some time, Miranda says he has also gone to McKinleyville Animal Care Center and both Humboldt Spay and Neuter Network and Critters Without Litters for sterilization and injuries, but that his staff makes appointments for him and he isn’t sure.
One of the pit bulls found among the eight dogs buried on his rescue’s property, he says, attacked a baby’s stroller, biting a wheel and refusing to release it. “Thank God I was here,” he says, breath hitching. “I would be in more trouble than I am now if that dog would have killed that baby.” (Miranda tells the Journal contact information for the woman pushing the stroller is unavailable.)
Miranda says he’s not sure how many dogs he’s put down with a gun. “It’s not a ton of dogs but it hasn’t been that many,” he says. In the last four years, he estimates, “I can say maybe 10 times, 15 times — maybe a dog — it hasn’t been, like, mass dogs.” All of them, he says, were extremely aggressive dogs that posed a threat to people or other animals.
The day after Raymond called to tell her about digging up the dogs at Miranda’s Rescue, Woods says her supervisors at the Solano County shelter pulled her aside to ask why she was making PRA requests. When one asked what she’d found out about Miranda’s Rescue, her reaction was visceral. “I just vomited all over her, I was crying,” she says.
Woods says she understands dogs have to be euthanized at times, even in a “no-kill” rescue, where healthy, adoptable animals aren’t killed to make room for more. “I don’t think anyone in shelters thinks that doesn’t happen.” That’s different, she says, than “to be lied to specifically.”
After tallying the numbers she and Raymond gathered with calls and PRA requests, Woods came up with a total of 635 dogs for 2025, about 70 fewer than the previous year’s number. “I guess I’m a little OCD when it comes to organizing things,” she says of the color coding, the chart and the fact sheet. The packaged information “was just for me approaching shelters and trying to convince them not to send any dogs to Miranda’s again.”
Documents in hand, Woods says she presented the information to Berkeley Animal Care Services, informing Field Services Officer London Rivera there that one of the eight dogs buried at Miranda’s Rescue was Charmaine, a Berkeley transfer. (When contacted by the Journal, Rivera had no comment as the investigation is ongoing.)
On April 30, Woods says she met with Rivera, Animal Services Director for Berkeley Animal Care Services Mike St. Pierre, OAS Operations Manager Melinda Tierney and Director Joe DeVries. “I was extremely scared. I know the shelters have an incentive to have high live rates,” says Woods, who was concerned shelters were aware of the numbers seeming off but “passing the buck.” Instead, she says, they were upset, angry and appreciative of her work, as well as concerned about her well-being. “I was floored by their response,” she says. “These people care about dogs.”
“The impression I got from them, from Oakland, from Berkeley and Solano, was just horror,” says Woods. “I don’t think for an instant that these shelters that I talked to knew what was happening.”
Sitting behind the bar in his garage, Miranda says, “Everyone thinks I made this ton of money off all these dogs — not true. … It takes so much time and so much energy feeding, training and having other people walk dogs.” With all the expenses from food to payroll, he says, “It takes $115,000 a month to keep this going.” (That does not appear to align with Miranda’s Rescue’s 2024 tax filings, which list total expenses, including salaries and other expenses, at $671,516.) Miranda feels his finances and lifestyle have been the subject of unfair suspicion for years. His husband Jim Oxboro, he says, came to their marriage with his own money and their real estate holdings are not as lavish as people say. Miranda counts off the couple’s one house in Humboldt and a rented condo and a main house in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas, Miranda says, face flushing and eyes wet, is his refuge. “I’ve been doing this 31 fucking years and I can’t have one place and vent after 31 years of all my work? … I can’t have one place where I can go and relax?”
Some of the dogs he’s taken in should never have come to him, Miranda says. “It’s my fault because I’ve kind of allowed myself to become the dumping ground.”
The condition of dogs upon arrival is another issue, he says. “I don’t want to throw people under the bus but it’s go time. I’m not going to sit here and get barbecued.” He leans forward and says, “Every single dog — and I mean this absolutely — every single dog that came up from Oakland Animal Services was drugged up on Trazodone and Gabapentin. For lack of a better word, they were so fucked up they couldn’t even walk. And we had to carry some dogs to the kennels, they were so drugged up. And I would walk back to the van and say, ‘What am I supposed to do with dogs that can’t walk?’”
Miranda goes on to say that six months ago, dogs from Oakland had arrived dead of heat stroke after traveling in a van with no air conditioning. He says he gave the dogs mouth-to-mouth and was only able to save one, and that shelter staff told him they were horrified and felt bad.
After consulting with staff who’d been at OAS before De Vries’ arrival, De Vries confirms that one dog died in transit to Miranda’s Rescue two years ago in a van without working air conditioning, but that was the only dog and the only instance. Friends of Oakland Animal Services raised funds to provide working air conditioning and dogs have not been transported without it since.
Trazodone and Gabapentin, a sedative combination of the sort one might give a dog ahead of July 4 fireworks, are given to some dogs at OAS, says De Vries. Staff gave the medication to Zora, according to her file, when she was stressed out in the kennels, which can be loud at a municipal shelter at capacity. “It gets to some dogs after a while,” he notes. But, De Vries says, “They’re still very active. They can go outside and go for walks.” A large enough dose to have a dog stumbling isn’t used except for surgery, he says. However, also two years ago, dogs were given Trazodone and Gabapentin to calm them for travel. Miranda complained that a dog arrived drugged and unable to walk, says De Vries, so they discontinued giving the medications the day of travel.
That every OAS dog arrived incapacitated, De Vries says, is a “complete lie.”
Reached by phone in Panama, where she has retired after serving as OAS animal care coordinator, Martha Cline confirms that after Miranda’s initial complaint, the shelter stopped sending dogs dosed with Trazodone and Gabapentin the morning they travel. She adds he hadn’t complained about drugged or aggressive dogs in the last couple years. “I never sent him dogs without telling him about the dogs” and their issues, she says. “I always sent behavior notes with the dogs because he doesn’t do email.” She says it’s true OAS didn’t take dogs back since they were all slated for euthanasia at the shelter and Miranda’s Rescue was their last chance, a situation Miranda says he was reminded of multiple times. There was no reason, Cline says, to subject the animals to the long ride back to Oakland just to be put down.
De Vries confirms OAS sent 205 dogs to Miranda’s Rescue in 2025. Recalling Woods’ visit to the shelter and the total number of dogs sent from shelters around the state, he says, “When we saw that math, our stomachs sank. There was just no way he could have adopted out all these animals.” De Vries has since seen the graphic photos and videos of dead dogs pulled from the ground at the rescue online. “That alone would be enough for me to grab a shovel” and search the property, he says.
Following the search warrant, Animal Control visits Miranda’s Rescue for voluntary monitoring three times a week, accompanied once a week by a veterinarian who asked not to be named in this story. “I’m pretty much there as an advocate for the animal,” they say. The health checks are brief, the vet explains, and include monitoring weight and condition, and giving recommendations, which Miranda, as the owner of the animals, can follow or not. So far, they say, he’s been cooperative. The vet says they don’t feel comfortable commenting on the status of the dogs or how they’re doing beyond their being generally OK. “Just like Humboldt County Animal Shelter, they have thin dogs in their shelter — it happens — dogs get stressed in a shelter situation and they’ll lose weight.”
Over the phone, Moore says the Facebook Group she created, “Where are the Dogs Sent to Miranda’s Rescue in Fortuna, California,” has found more confirmed adoptions in the last couple weeks, totaling around 10 of the nearly 800 dogs posted on the page for people or shelters who have brought animals there over the years.
OAS chips every dog before it leaves the shelter, says De Vries, but the database has to be updated by vets and rescues when the dog moves on. “What rescue doesn’t scan the dog when it arrives and inform the new adopters about it?” he asks. “That’s animal adoptions 101.” An OAS veterinarian has looked up a couple hundred chipped dogs that have gone up to Miranda’s Rescue, he says, and only found four with updated names of new adopters so far. But De Vries is quick to add this doesn’t mean the other dogs are lost or dead, just that the record hasn’t been updated.
Once his paperwork is returned by the sheriff’s office, Miranda says he’ll be able to trace where most animals went. But he has little sympathy for former owners who want to trace dogs. “It’s none of their business,” Miranda says. “Most of the people who drop dogs off, they’re gonna dump them. They don’t want them. They moved into an apartment. They’re pregnant. ‘I don’t want the dog anymore.’ And now that this is going on,” he says, “they want their 15 seconds of fame.”
Some shelters have picked up transferred dogs from Miranda’s Rescue but Miranda is resistant to sending some, especially long-term dogs, back, he says, for fear the shelters will euthanize them. In his interview with the Journal three weeks before the second search warrant operation and excavation began on June 23, Miranda says the rescue was operating as usual. Though now, he says, he’s “doing paperwork on everything.” Asked if he thinks Miranda’s Rescue will be able to continue in the wake of the evolving investigation, he offers a defiant yes. “If anybody can pull this out, I can, because I’ve been honest and I’ve been truthful.” After this story went to press, a sheriff’s office press conference had been tentatively set for 2 p.m. to release more information if available. (Visit northcoastjournal.com for updates.)
For him and Oxboro personally, “It’s been really hard on both of us. The death threats are horrible,” as are, Miranda says, the ones his friends have received for defending him online. He says he no longer feels safe allowing his grandson or other family members to walk outside on the property or go outside at night. He says he’s had animals turned loose from their enclosures and on top of being watched by Raymond next door, strange cars have pulled up to his gates and set everyone on edge.
“The people that I thought were my really good friends — people I’ve gone all through kindergarten, high school, college with — haven’t even reached out because they’re afraid for whatever. I’m done,” Miranda says. “If you know me and you know my heart, you know what I’ve done, I have no guilt for anything I’ve done because I have a responsibility to keep the public safe. Was it the best choice? Probably not.” But, he says, panic and the possible consequences of an aggressive animal hurting someone forced his hand.
“At the end of the day, I’m trying to do my very best. Why isn’t anyone focusing on all the good that I’ve done?” Miranda asks. “I just don’t get why people have to be so evil.”
Woods is still gathering information on transferred dogs, contacting shelters and updating her numbers. So far, she hasn’t found any information on Kane, the dog she grew so attached to in Solano.
Despite knowing intellectually that she’s not responsible for the deaths of any dogs, Woods says, “The hardest part is I have so much guilt about these dogs. If I had just been able to save these dogs, if I had asked more questions sooner … maybe I could have done something sooner.”
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the date dogs were disinterred at Miranda’s Rescue.
This article appears in Miranda’s Rescue Under Scrutiny, Part 2.
