When should you call Animal Control?

They are better for some situations than others.

When and how to work with Animal Control

First, if an Animal Control Officer asks me to do something, or not to do something, I will always defer to them.  It’s their job.  I’m thankful that they do the work, and they have tools and equipment for certain situations.  If your dog is missing, in most cases I would recommend you let Animal Control know about the situation.  If you see a stray dog, usually it can’t hurt to notify Animal Control.

That being said, there are situations where Animal Control may not be best suited for the job.  In some jurisdictions, the Animal Control Officer is basically a law enforcement officer who deals with animals.  In some jurisdictions, all of the police officers handle animal control issues, often without any special equipment or training.  I have met Animal Control Officers who were completely inept, and backwards in their thinking.  One ACO, I’m not making this up, said to me, “If I see a stray dog, I throw rocks at him and tell him to go home.”  Definitely not what you want from a paid professional. In King County, we have a great staff of ACOs with skills, training, and equipment.  They can’t respond to every stray or lost dog when there are at least 10,000 lost dogs in King County every year.  Even when an ACO can respond, when it’s the type of request they are likely to come out for, there can be situations where an ACO might not be the best person for the job.  There have been hundreds of cases where I was able to catch dogs when ACOs could not.

Last week, I learned of a dog wandering in a certain neighborhood for several days.  I went to help him because I felt certain that I could.  I saw him within minutes of going to the area, and I set a trap.  Within ten minutes, he had come by the trap to check it out.  He wandered off again on the loop he had been running, but I felt confident he would come back soon. ACOs, not from King County, came to the area because they had been called about the dog.  I explained that I had just seen him several times, he was running in a loop, and he had already checked out the trap once.  It was very likely that he would go in soon, and I would bring the dog to them.  They said, Okay, and they didn’t tell me not to have a trap set for him.  About twenty minutes later, they drove up with the dog in the back of their truck.  Great job, right?  Yes, but they had caught him when he went into a fenced yard, and then they cornered him.  It worked, in this case, but there was a high risk of the dog escaping by jumping the fence, and also he might have bitten one of the officers.  A humane trap is often the least traumatic way for a dog to be helped.  If the trap had been given another 20 minutes to do it’s job, it’s very likely the dog would have been caught in a safe and calm way.  In my experience, ACOs don’t use humane traps on a regular basis, and they tend to want to be proactive and go get the dog sooner rather than later.  Sometimes that gamble pays off, but if it backfires and the dog bolts, they may have made the dog harder to catch eventually.  In many cases, I like to start off with the humane trap because it is the least likely to compound problems if it doesn’t work.  If the dog doesn’t go in the trap, at least he isn’t spooked and chased to a new area.  When I am helping a lost or stray dog, I always want to use the methods in the order that they don’t make matters worse, even if the first method chosen is not successful.  As far as I know, ACOs don’t have traps on their trucks.  I don’t know why.  I wish each ACO truck had a 48 F trap and the ACO was skilled at using it.  One reason they might not want to use a trap is that it can take time, hours or days, and ACOs typically have to move on to the next call, and they don’t have the time to babysit a trap for hours.  That’s something that volunteers are better equipped to do.

Last night, I went to try to help a dog that was running on the freeway.  He had been missing for four days, and was running in panic.  He even ran from his owner when she saw him.  She used the appropriate calming signals, but he blew right by her.  Eventually, he was located visually in the center median between eastbound and westbound lanes on a freeway with a speed limit of 70, where the average speed is 80.  That section of the median was about 80 feet wide, with a couple of large evergreen trees in the middle, which provided a hiding place for the dog.  I have tried to help many dogs in this stretch of the freeway, and not all of them survived.  I wanted to be very careful in how we approached him.  My plan was to set a trap just east of his position, in a safe spot under the overpass, between two huge pillars.  I coordinated with a family member to set the trap and bait it, and set up a camera to watch it, so we would know when he went in.  As one family member was setting the trap as I instructed, another family member was watching the dog to see his reaction.  If the dog noticed the person approaching and setting the trap, the person on the overpass would tell his brother to stop moving, to avoid spooking the dog.  The trap was successfully placed without spooking him.  He tested the trap, and reset it.  My camera was working well, so I would see when the dog went in.

Someone, who was trying to help, called the police for help.  Once the police were involved, they couldn’t really let citizens conduct a trapping operation in the median of a freeway, no matter how careful we were being.  They didn’t chase us away or arrest us, but they did call Animal Control.  The safety of humans is a priority for Law Enforcement and for Animal Control.  When the ACOs came and talked to me, I explained about the trap and camera and that I wanted to give it time to work.  The ACO said she needed to resolve the situation faster, in order to minimize the risk to people.  Her plan was block the left lane of traffic in each direction, using their emergency vehicles with lights, and to have about 6 ACOs and LEOs approach the dog from both sides with catch poles.  She would take the lead to try to get the dog without him running, and the others would be there for backup.  She asked what I thought of the plan, and I said there was at least an 80% chance that the dog would bolt and that he would run into traffic on the freeway.  She acknowledged that that was a risk, but that they couldn’t just walk away and leave the situation unresolved.  If a volunteer or family member was hit and killed on the freeway, the LEOs and ACOs would be held responsible for not acting. She allowed us another hour to see if the trap would work, and when the dog did not show up on my cameras, they went in to get him.

From the start, I could see it was a bad plan, or poorly executed.  The police cars trained their spotlights on the dog’s hiding place.  This was bound to flush him out.  Before the six officers could even get into position, the dog bolted toward the overpass, turned to run onto the freeway, was blocked by a police car, and ran back to his hiding place in the low branches of the tree.  Over the course of about 40 minutes, the officers tried to get the catch poles on the dog as he moved around the tree trunk, among the low branches.  We could hear him barking in protest, and the officers would shift their positions to block him from coming out one way or another.  They eventually got the 90 pound dog and pulled him out with two catch poles and put him in the truck.  Again, a great success story, right?  I mean, no plan ever goes perfectly, and they were able to get him with no harm to the dog or to people.  I shouldn’t complain if the ACOs and LEOs did a great job and it worked out well.  I feel like I should just be grateful that they do the work they do.

I am grateful and I do appreciate that, in this situation, they did what they had to do, and it worked out right.  I would not call it a success, entirely.  The dog did bolt, and almost ran onto the freeway.  It was very predictable that he would bolt.  It is only by luck that he happened to run back to his hiding place at the base of the tree.  It could easily have turned out very badly.  He could have been killed right then and there, with his owner standing up on the overpass, watching helplessly.  Because the dog did not die does not mean that the ACOs’ approach was the best.  I understand that laws constrain them, and maybe they didn’t think they could just stand idly by and let the trap do its work over time.  Had it been up to me, I would not have called the police or Animal Control in this situation precisely because they would be compelled to act, to go in after the dog.  I think it would have been much safer, and with the best chance of success, to give the trap more time to work.

If my dog was missing, I wouldn’t automatically call Animal Control in every situation.  If I knew of a stray dog that was wandering and needed help, I might hesitate to call Animal Control.  There are many situations when they can help, and they have the tools and authority to do things citizens can’t.  Before I would call in an ACO, I would try to think what their approach is likely to be, and whether that is going to be the best way to help the dog.  In many cases, ACOs are not the answer.  How will you know if your situation is right for calling Animal Control?  It’s difficult for me to say, and I can’t really give you a checklist to help guide you as to when you definitely should or should not call animal control.  If I am working on a case, either of someone’s missing dog, or a case of a stray dog with no known owner, I would definitely appreciate the chance to be consulted before Animal Control is called.  I am not against animal control, and I don’t fault them for the work they do or how they do it.  I am grateful that they do such good work.  If I have a say in the matter, there will be many cases where I would prefer not to call them because I feel that my approach will be safest for the dog, with the highest chance of success.  I am not infallible, and I could be wrong in my judgement once in a while.  In my experience, which is quite a lot of experience, we have been able to help dogs when the assistance of Animal Control probably would have reduced our odds of success.  I have caught hundreds of dogs that Animal Control tried and failed to catch.  I’m always happy to work with Animal Control Officers when I can.  If they were open to it, I would like to train Animal Control Officers in alternative methods they could use sometimes to increase their chances of success.

Last weekend, I was called to help a sweet little doodle.  She had just arrived at her new home, and she had bolted when she was spooked by something unexpected.  She had been on the loose for 16 hours, but was staying within 6 houses of her new home.  I saw her shortly after I arrived.  I coached the owner on what to do and what not to do.  Within three hours, she was in my trap, safe and sound.  I had a high degree of confidence I could catch her in the calmest and safest way.  It was a situation that did not need an Animal Control Officer, and I was glad that no ACO came along during the capture of the doodle because they may have felt they were compelled to act, possibly reducing the chances of catching this dog.  Am not anti-ACO.  I am grateful for their good work and I think we should all appreciate them.  Still, I am not going to recommend calling Animal Control in every case.  Sometimes another approach may be best for a particular dog or situation.

6 years ago, a black German Shepherd was running from people.  She was very near a freeway.  She was up in the mountains, far from any city, with just a few cabins in the area.  People could not catch her.  I believe Animal Control was called, but they were unsuccessful in catching her.  (I don’t know for certain whether they responded to try to catch her.)   I went up there with a trap, and she went in my trap within ten minutes.  She was safe, and not too bothered about being trapped.  The next day, she gave birth to a noisy little puppy.  Since that puppy was born, he has been trained to find lost dogs, and he has saved many lives.  If his mother’s fate was solely up to Animal Control, I think there is a high probability that she and her baby would not have survived.  While I support ACOs and want to work with them as much as I can, I’m always going to advocate for what’s best for the dog, and sometimes that is a different approach.