The 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers Love L.A. Community Tour continued on Thursday as the fourth day with Tony Gonsolin and Hunter Feduccia taking a trip to an animal shelter while Mookie Betts hosted a financial literacy workshop.
Gonsolin and Feduccia took a tour of the North Central Animal Services Center, which is just minutes from Dodger Stadium, to help promote adoptions and to learn about the various jobs and departments that are required to keep the shelter running.
“It’s really cool for it to be so close to Dodger Stadium, I didn’t even know this existed here and how close it is,” Gonsolin said. “But it’s really cool to see all the animals, how they treat them, the way that they handle them and trying to give them the best life that they can have here, unfortunately being locked up and looking for adoption.
“There’s a lot of animals here for adoption. They said they had 290-something dogs, which is like 130 over capacity. So just trying to get the awareness out and get these dogs in better homes, these cats in better homes. There’s just a lot of cases.”
The tour of course showed the players the commonly know areas of a shelter, including the kennels for both dogs and cats, but also some of the lesser-known areas not usually seen to the public, including the fear and stress rooms, quarantine areas, the veterinary tech center, and even the kitchen and laundry rooms.
Although it was an informative day, it wasn’t without some emotions.
“Just seeing them caged in and needing a loving home, it was kind of heartbreaking in a way,” Feduccia said. “But just spreading the awareness, making sure people know these are loving animals that need a home is all we can do.”
Mookie Betts joins Dodgers Love L.A. Community Tour
Earlier in the day, Mookie Betts and his wife, Brianna, attended a financial literacy workshop at Dodger Stadium with students from Panorama and Fremont high schools, as well as L.A. Unified School District Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho.
“Just understanding the value of a dollar, how to balance checkbooks, and how to just do normal things, giving them tools for actual life and not necessarily just solving problems, I think that’s a very important thing,” Betts said.
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