A recent incident of dogs attacking and killing a New Jersey child causes me dismay as the dogs’ owner failed to heed previous warnings about the danger his dogs presented to the community. These cases continue to arise because pet owners are not held accountable for their dog’s actions and as such are not properly charged with reckless endangerment or homicide. Prosecutors need to understand that simply having the animals euthanized is insufficient justice. The animals had to pay the price for bad owners; now the owners need to feel the hand of justice for the terror they unleash upon their community.
Who Do You Serve?
One of the greatest challenges that you’ll face is the constant question as to who do you serve? Many people getting into the animal welfare profession will tell you that they are “here for the animals.” That is a noble cause, but are animals all that you serve?
When you start your job, you are going to find competing demands as to who you serve. You’ll have to have some loyalty to the bureaucrats who hired you, after all that in addition to the salary that they pay you, they control the purse stings for your organization. You will find it critical to your cause to quickly respond to commission or council members. Having friendly folks on your commission/council will be advantageous at budget time. I had a County Manager in Florida who wanted to drastically cut our budget; fortunately we have several “friends” on the Commission who stopped him and in the end our budget was increased.
Do not forget that you have your community to serve. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of them to remind you that they pay your salary. No matter how demanding that they can become, they are your primary responsibility. Every thing that we do much insure the safety of your community.
Your volunteers may expect that they become your primary focus. In Virginia we had volunteers that wanted to “drive the boat.” They wanted animals to supersede our mission to keep our community safe. They were very vocal in our community. In previous posts, you will see that this was a problem for many shelters in Virginia. Too many shelters gave in to the forces that wanted them to adopt potentially dangerous dogs. Many of them later faced lawsuits for failing in their duties to protect the public.
Above all else, you have to serve yourself. You have to protect your personal and professional integrity and that of your organization. I got into a lot of hot water with my Board because they didn’t like condescension caused by volunteers not getting their way. Sometimes even your Board of Directors forget who they are supposed to serve. You must be willing to risk your job in order to keep your community safe.
The most important factor in your career is to constantly maintain the balance to those who you serve. “Be true to thy own self.”
What is in a Name?
As a result of the Movement to Defund the Police, Police Departments are facing the same issue that Animal Control organizations have faced for years. For some reason, Community leaders think that an organization’s name is everything. Animal Control Officers have faced the gambit of Pound, to Animal Control, to Animal Services, to Animal Care and Protective Services. The fact is that changing a name does little. If you want to see more community support, you need to fund the organization sufficiently to allow it to do their job.
Police Departments are undergoing name changes to Department of Public Services. To me, a “public service” includes trash pickup. The purpose of Defunding the Police movement is to stop officers from arresting people. The fewer people arrested of minor crimes will reduce the number of minorities going to jail. If a community is serious about wanting every community to be treated the same, then the solution is to fund racial sensitivity training to encourage our officers to see into the mind of the minorities that they come in contact with. I am not talking about the idiotic training that claims that there is something wrong with people born white. Racial equality is not reached by suppressing whites. Racial equality is to show the community that everyone is treated the same. It should also show that when arrested, that people should act the same. If you act like a butthead when you are arrested, you should not expect the same treatment as someone how respects the officer arresting you.
Changing the name of an organization will do nothing. It takes the proper funding and attention to an organization to facilitate change. It should not restrict an officer from applying the sufficient force to keep from getting hurt, or doing their jobs. The best thing that a community can give to their employees is to provide them the necessary training to do their jobs correctly. Unfortunately, during budget cuts, employee training is the first to go.
Porch Safety
As an Animal Control Officer, the household porch can be one of the most dangerous places that we face. You must arm yourself in preparation to protect yourself.
If you are approaching a porch and there is a dog on the porch, using an ultrasonic device will aid your in determining the dog’s behavior as you approach. I most cases, the dog will move away from the front door and allow you to approach. You need to keep in mind that an ultrasonic device is your least effective tool to keep you safe.
A metal clipboard is the best defense in protecting yourself if you are attacked. You might be attacked by a dog at the door when you approach or when the dog owner opens the door and the dog escapes through the open door. It is important to use the clipboard as a shield and offer the board to the dog as it attempts to bite you.
It is not uncommon that you might be attacked by more than one dog. Pepper spray is your best approach in dealing with multiple dogs or if you are finding your clipboard ineffective. It is important to shake up your can of pepper spray once a week to make sure the pepper is evenly suspended in the container. Pepper spray comes in various concentrations from .003% concentration to 20% concentration. The 20% solution is sold to hikers to use on bears; but it appears to be a big hit with protesters; it produces a nice wide spray and comes in a larger container…. thus it will protect you longer.
If the dog pursues you to your vehicle and continues the attack, you should have a CO2 fire extinguisher available to keep the dog at bay until you can call for backup or until you can reach for your catch-pole.
As with the clipboard, the catch-pole is an effective shield to keep the dog at bay, but it is an ineffective tool if do don’t open the noose. If you cannot get the open noose over the dog’s head, you might consider letting the dog bite the noose and chinch the noose closed on the dog’s muzzle. You can then feed a second catch-pole noose over the first catch-pole and work the noose down the catch-pole and over the dog’s head.
Using a catch-pole usually causes a scene and in today’s society, capturing the dog will likely be videotaped and put on social media. You have the way your capture method decision against being injured by the dog.
In Search of the Illusive Responsible Pet Owner
One of the lamest campaigns that I ever conducted was “ACOs looking for RPOs.” I grew weary of being in a profession in which I patrolled the streets for law breakers. I decided to turn things around and began a short-lived campaign to look for responsible pet owners.
My first mistake was putting signage on my vehicle: you cannot expect people to understand an acronym unless it is known to them. Most people quickly figured out what an ACO is, but I had them scratching their heads with RPO. As is human nature, they took the acronym to a bad place.
My second mistake was actually thinking that I could easily find RPOs. Maybe my criteria was too steep. I wanted to do it big, so I had our Mayor to sign a bunch of declarations and had toys, treats, and bags of dog food. I hit the road looking for people walking their currently licensed dog on leash.
The leash part was easy, anytime a dog owner saw the animal control truck driving towards them, they instinctually put the leash on their dog. The dog license was another matter. People did not appear geared to license their dogs. Years later, I found myself writing animal control ordinances that required a dog to be microchipped after having been impounded on numerous occasions to be found without identification.
Most communities have laws that require that a dog (and sometimes cats) to not be released from the shelter without a current license. For shelters that have a veterinarian on staff to give rabies vaccinations, this is an easy task. For shelters without veterinarians, the task isn’t so easy to fulfill.
I had an incident in which the dog owner was so obsentant, after multiple times of failing to take his dog to his veterinarian for a rabies vaccination that I required that he make his veterinarian make a house call at the animal shelter to vaccinate the dog prior to reclaiming his dog; otherwise, he would never had complied.
In the end, my month of searching for an RPO resulted in me finding one person walking their dog on leash with the dog wearing a current dog license. The dog license seems like such a small thing until an animal control officer drives up to a scene of an injured dog that was hit by a car. The animal control officer has to decide if the life of the dog can be saved. Due to budget limitations, most animal control departments do not have the funds to treat every critically injured animals without any known indication of ownership. When the dog is wearing current identification, the animal control officer is relieved of that decision. The dog will be transported to an emergency veterinary clinic and kept stable until the owner can be contacted. The license can be the difference between life and death for their animal, and yet it is only found on five percent of the lost dogs entering animal shelters.
Maintaining Shelter Standards
When I began in the animal welfare profession euthanasia rates were over 90 percent. 35 years later, we are experiencing placement rates at 90 percent. We have come a long way and there are plenty of people wanting to claim credit for our success. Many animal shelters have euthanasia rates under 5 percent.
Ten years ago, Delaware created a law that prohibited a shelter from having any empty kennels; I was opposed to Delaware’s law, it created a crisis every time that an Animal Control Officer brought in a stray animal, because there were no empty cages. Experience teaches every shelter manager to know the number of cages that must be empty to accommodate intakes. In addition to the number of animals that are delivered by officers, the public is at your front door delivering animals. No one is going to ask a person to hold on to the animal until someone can go back and “make space.”
Colorado decided to go further, animal shelters cannot euthanize, even if they lack cage space. Since no kill has become a moot issue in our shelters as the reach or exceed 90 percent placement rates, politicians are eager to move shelters to the next evolution of animal sheltering: for the shelter to become a “socially conscious shelter.” A shelter that does not concern itself with the practical side of animal sheltering but look only to the needs of the animals. On the surface, this sounds like a great idea. A socially conscious shelter doesn’t have to worry about cage space. Whether or not there is cage space, you find a spot for the animal. And then, try to provide care.
The concept of “just one more animal,” is the premise that starts every animal hoarding situation. I had to oversee a seizure of 700 cats in which the organization started with just a few and just kept accept “just one more” cat.
The politicians like to get their faces in the media showing their support for saving the animals. When they are done, they leave one more unfunded mandate and leave the local jurisdictions responsible for administering the mess that they have created. Every community is difference; they allocate different budgets and enjoy different mores. Due to the uniqueness of communities, they should be allowed to enact their own laws.
What role will the State of Colorado have when they have to deal with shutting down rural animal shelters for either failing to comply with the new law or that they have become hoarders and have insufficient funds and staffing to care for the newfound burden placed on them by the State.
Animal Shelters have a responsibility to care for the animals that come to them. Forcing them to start hoarding animals is going to diminish the general care that they can provide. Under the right circumstances, this new law will have unintended inhumane consequences as animal shelters are force to hold animals beyond their capacity of space and staffing.
The Blog of Shame
The mention of skunk oil in the last blog caused me to have a twinge of shame. Early in my career I received a call to remove a skunk from a leg hold trap. The caller was using a leg hold trap to catch his neighbor’s cats. He caught a skunk instead.
Most cities or counties have animal control ordinance that prohibit leg hold traps. It is pretty callous to put such a trap where children and pets can be harmed; to be honest, I don’t think much of them being used in the wild either. I only have mixed feeling about them with rodents. When I got the call, I was pretty angry. I was so full of self righteousness that I wanted to teach this person a lesson.
I discovered that I could get the skunk to spray towards me six times. For this, I admit my shame. For months, maybe six or eight, I would drive through that neighborhood and smell the results of my actions. Although I was new in my career and didn’t know what I was doing, a half of squirt would have been more than effective in sending my message. Of course the caller just assumed that the smell was associate with the act of removing a skunk from a leg hold trap… which, it was. He was just happy that he had someone else to call to clean up his mess.
I fear that the rest of the neighbors were collateral damage. They never came to know that their cats were being trapped, but they had to suffer the consequences of my actions. Even releasing the skunk into the wild gave me no comfort. I carry that shame. However, I was never called to that house again.
I guess it would be appropriate for me to now have a tutorial as to how to remove a skunk from a leg hold trap. But, in life, some things are best learned by doing. Just one word of advice, don’t step in any area in which the skunk sprays.
Anger
I’ve noticed that the world has become an angrier place. We see people getting in fights over the most insignificant things. Fights in fast food lines. Fights over the wearing of face masks. Fights over encroachment of one’s personal space.
We are entering a new anger phase in which gun sales are increasing. Some communities are reporting a shortage of bullets.
It should come as no surprise that guns and anger don’t mix.; and yet, we are seeing an increase of violence in our larger cities. This demonstrates the biggest problem with our 2nd Amendment, it allows for the purchase of guns by crazy people. The percentage of crazy people are increasing. You can spot them on the news every evening.
More guns, More crazy people. Defund the police. We have become a society of idiots. The purpose of this rant is that it is becoming more and more dangerous dealing with pet owners. If you have followed along, for any length of time, in reading this blog, you know that I have mentioned that ours is a very volatile profession. And now, you will be interacting with people who have developed shorter fuses and may be armed.
The best part of being an anima control officer is being able to back away from a situation that is starting to get out of control. Since most animal control officers are not armed, backing away is a good strategy. Due to police shortages, you may be out in the field without police backup. Talk to your police department to make clear when and where they will pull your bacon out of the fire.
More than ever, you must me aware of your surroundings. You need to read the situation and accept the situation when the person clearly isn’t going to listen to you. If you find yourself in a fight, you have failed.
So, everyone fails once in a while, so as you are watching your surroundings, you should always be looking for tools to help you get out of the situation. Never stand where you become boxed in and become acquainted with the tools that you carry. Tools that you carry to protect your from dogs can be effective on people; but, please don’t use my name when you are talking to the media about putting a catchpole on a person. However, the catchpole, clipboard and cans of Halt might aid you in getting back into your truck. Don’t just sit in the truck, drive a few blocks away to put distance between you and the angry person.
Animal Welfare is a wonderful profession, but it requires that you be constantly aware of your surroundings. Be safe out there.
The Impact on Animal Welfare in Defunding Police Departments
Many animal control programs are under police department’s management. in the current efforts to defund police departments, many cities will make token efforts to support taking funds away from their police departments. Police departments will begin eliminating or reducing staffing in noncritical areas.
Most police departments consider their animal control program as a noncritical area. It is a strongly held belief that protecting people is more important than protecting pets. Who can disagree?
As police struggle to meet new funding challenges, they will be force to reassess funding for noncritical services. Police departments may find it necessary to stop responding to calls relating to animals and only respond to calls that are an immanent threat to people.
When calls are received about vicious dogs, Police officers may be forced to respond because their trained animal control officers have been fired in the forced reduction in force (RIF). The untrained police officers will not have the skillset to capture the dog(s) alive.
The reductions to our police departments are going to change the safety of our communities and change the way communities deal with animal welfare issues. Many communities will lose the buffer that protects them from the elements that would cause them harm.
I have to admit that I have encountered many folks who could not resolve their own problems. It disturbed me that we have become far removed from our pioneer ancestors. Many in our communities have become helpless. If any good comes out of eliminating services, maybe these people will be force to start to start taking care of themselves and not depend on others to do it for them.
Continuum of Force
The continuum of force is becoming a greatly debated issue with police tactics. It might be best to illustrate the continuum as a ladder that requires a person to start at the lowest rung to reach a desired goal. Although police officers and animal control officers have different job duties, they both use the continuum to complete their job. The greatest difference between the two professions is that animal control officers can back away, if the job places them at immediate risk; they can always call a police officer to protect them. Although this post is not to discuss the pros and cons of animal control officers carrying guns, it demonstrates that as long as police officers carry guns, it is not so necessary for animal control officers to do so.
It all starts with the uniform. When I first started in the animal control profession, my boss, the Police Chief, wanted me to wear a uniform. He had boxes of left over uniforms when the department updated their uniforms. I convinced him to allow me to wear an off-the-shelf work outfit from JC Penney’s. I wanted a uniform that I could easily wash and made me look more like a UPS driver than a cop.
The Police Chief insisted that I wear a badge. He didn’t see the humor when I showed up with a tie-tack as a badge. I explained that I crawled through bushes and might lose “a real badge.” We agreed on something that was larger than the tie-tack and smaller than the police officer’s badge.
I bring up this war story to show that the uniform is the first rung of the continuum. In most circumstances, the uniform is sufficient for most reasonable people to accept the authority of the police officer and in recognizing that, no further force is necessary. Unfortunately, we have stopped being reasonable people. People now go out of their way to escalate their engagements with police officers. As such, the officer needs as many nonlethal tools as possible.
Given recent protests, people are complaining about the nonlethal tools that the police officers are using on looters. The looters are complaining that they don’t like to be hit with rubber bullets or sprayed with pepper spray. So, City Councils are banning the use of many nonlethal tools. The fewer the tools, the more that can go wrong. In the military, we used firehoses to breakup riots, unfortunately, those firehoses are needed to put out the fires that are started by the looters.
You might be saying that many peaceful nonlooters were harmed by rubber bullets and pepper spray. I would think that if you are standing in a crowd that is looting and burning buildings, you are pretty stupid standing around to watch. When people get out of control, it is a good time to pack up your protest and go home.
People go out of their way to confront police officers. It is all the more reason that animal control officers should not dress up like a police officer. We are not trained to verbally deal with those altercations. Given how people are trying to push police officers up the steps of the continuum of force, animal control officers are ill prepared. Given that City Councils are taking away the tools that are necessary for police officers; police officers are finding that as they are be pushed up that continuum, many rungs or missing and the jump to lethal force is becoming shorter.
I have encountered many animal control officer who want to become police officers. Our profession is a good stepping stone to that honorable profession; but, now is not the time to make ourselves look like police officers. We are witnessing a major increase in the number of crazy people wanting to harm them.
The best thing that we can learn from the recent interactions that the police are facing is to know when it becomes necessary to back away. Unfortunately, police officers are not in a profession in which they can take our lead.
In our profession, we have the following steps:
- Verbal – coaxing an animal to come to us.
- Snare – using a snappy snare to catch a shy animal.
- Ketch Pole – using a ketch-pole to handle a potentially dangerous animal.
- Live Trap – to catch an animal that we cannot get close to.
- Tranquiller dart – to catch the animals that cannot be caught by any other means.
In looking over our list, maybe we could loan a few of our tools to the police. Kidding! (Or am I?). I know, I know, in this day of people carry around a chip on their shoulders, some would say that I am suggesting that we treat people like animals. I just might be suggesting that we need to treat people in a way that keeps them and the police from getting hurt. Like the way things were done when the police officers could use pepper spray. Which, by the way, is an excellent tool for animal control officers for self defense.