“It didn’t work out,” Oggeri said in a statement. “There was a mutual parting of the ways.”

Laura Gretch moved from San Francisco and was hired to oversee Boston’s city-run animal shelter after officials discovered extensive mismanagement and neglect . Gretch started work in December and left her job last week, according to the spokeswoman, Laura Oggeri.

Boston’s director of Animal Care & Control unit has left her position after less than five months on the job, according to a spokeswoman for Mayor Martin J. Walsh.

Gretch could not be reached for comment. According to the résumé on her LinkedIn page, she worked for seven years for the San Francisco branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals before moving to Boston.


The city did not pay to move Gretch here from San Francisco, Oggeri said. Her annual salary was nearly $89,000.

Walsh reappointed John Meaney as interim director of animal control while the administration seeks a permanent replacement. Meaney became interim director last summer when the Animal Rescue League warned the Walsh administration that the city-run shelter in Roslindale was in crisis.

The rescue league found one dog in the shelter who was gaunt, dehydrated, and had open sores on her body. Other animals howled incessantly. Cats lay on single sheets of wet newspaper.

Walsh’s team immediately launched an investigation, moved dozens of animals to other shelters, and fired the city’s director of animal control, Mark Giannangelo. Giannangelo had been acting director of animal control for some time.