Pet Talk

By Cathy Davis
    He drove up and down the road, stifling his irritation at the potholes and cracks. He didn’t pick up the phone and report the road damage, but he went to the store and bought a bucket of tar and filled in a hole.  
    A neighbor did the same thing, and then another neighbor. At the end of the year the town reviewed their road budget and said “gee, we didn’t have to spend half as much this year on road repair, let’s cut the budget in half”. 
    The good Samaritans who fixed the roads got together and grumbled that the town wasn’t doing their job, where were all their tax dollars going? Why weren’t the roads fixed? Why was the funding being funneled away?
    This is an illustration, not a real story, obviously. But I want to try to give you an idea of what happens with animal welfare issues and why we need to follow certain rules and guidelines.
    Every town has a budget and every budget includes funding an animal control officer position and funding shelter services for stray animals. It’s state law. There is no way around it, every town has to have an ACO. They can be direct employees, they can be contracted, but there are certain expenses related to animal control such as vehicle use, maintenance, upkeep and gas, workers compensation costs, general liability costs, education and training for the officer, and equipment. These all have to be budgeted for.
    When the town is working on a budget they’ll look at the number of calls an ACO responds to and try to determine the amount needed for the following year. If an ACO gets three calls, his budget is cut and his income is reduced. So an ACO is often asked to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a very small annual fee. This makes it difficult to recruit trained animal welfare officers who truly care about the animals.
    In many cases over 100 animals come into the Shelter as strays from any given town but if they are all brought in by private citizens, the town has no idea how much service the Shelter gives or how many strays are actually residing in their town.
    So the first issue is budget. In order to get your tax dollar value out of your animal control budget, you must let your ACO do his job. And in order for the towns to budget for the Shelter services, they need to have accurate numbers on stray animal intake.
    The second issue is safety. There is a reason the state requires every town to have a trained animal control officer, and a reason why the state requires every ACO to have additional training every year. Bringing in a stray animal can be dangerous.
    What if you pick up a stray cat to drop off to the shelter and it bites you, you make a trip to the emergency room, you get an infection, you have thousands of dollars tied up in medical bills. Who pays for this? Do you expect the town to reimburse you because you were doing the town’s job?   
    What if you pick up a stray and it’s 9 o’clock at night, so you take it home and keep it warm and safe in your house, drop it off at the shelter in the morning, and then find out it tested positive for leukemia or aids. Your animals have been exposed. If you call the ACO, they have a key to the Shelter and can take an animal in regardless of the hour.
    Your Animal Control Officer actually knows a good percentage of the animals in his or her town. If you call about a Great Dane running loose down Route 1, chances are Kevin Upton will know exactly who owns that dog, he can pick him up and take him home. If you stop and coax this dog into your car and drive him to the shelter, the dog is stressed, the shelter doesn’t know who the owner is, and  it might be days before the owner calls the shelter to see if Fido has been brought in. 
     In the meantime this poor animal is searching every face, listening to every voice, wondering where his family is.
    There are dozens of reasons why Animal Control Officers should be the ones that you call when a stray shows up on your door step. Safety, budgeting, making sure the animal is returned to its owner when the owner is known, record keeping, and training. Animal Control Officers are specially trained individuals with the proper gear.   Can you pick up a cat and transport it?
    Well, if it lets you pick it up and it’s purring all the way to the shelter in the back seat of your car, chances are it isn’t a stray, it’s probably a neighbor’s cat.  
    If it climbs up over your back, into your hair, down your leg and under your feet while you’re driving, if it tries to eat you up, then it’s probably a stray and doesn’t it just make sense to let the professional handle it?
    And last, but not least, what if it’s sick or injured. Just the other day an ACO was called on a kitty who had very bad swelling on his feet, the ACO took the cat directly to the vet where he was checked, treated, given some antibiotics and a steroid shot and then brought to the shelter.
    Just one more reason to let your ACO do his (or her) job. 
    We appreciate your heart and compassion for the lost animals and hopefully this set of guidelines will make sense to you and give you some direction on how to handle the situation the next time you come across a stray. Thank you so much for caring.