Into the wild: Armed with little more than a catchpole and a leash, animal services officers strive to maintain a balance between humans, pets, and wildlife

In a popular cartoon, a dog catcher clumsily grabs a net from his truck and bumbles after a wily dog, his face grimacing, his teeth grinding as he chases his prey. Somehow this stereotype has made its way into our consciousness, so when we see an animal control officer (that’s their official title) approach our doorstep, that image of the mean ol' dog catcher might come to mind. 

However, the truth about their job is much different than the stereotype portrays. 

click to enlarge Into the wild: Armed with little more than a catchpole and a leash, animal services officers strive to maintain a balance between humans, pets, and wildlife
PHOTO BY SHELLY CONE
PLAYTIME: Supervising Animal Control Officer Joe Avalos plays with a German shepherd puppy in one of the play areas at the Santa Barbara County Animal Shelter.

Most of the officers at the Santa Barbara County Office of Animal Services said they got involved because they love animals and saw the position as a way to help them. 

Animal Control Officer Aaron Hernandez plays with Gemma the office dog while listening in to the morning department conference call. An outdoor sports enthusiast, Hernandez said he’s also fan of animals both wild and domestic. Part of the reason he got involved was to bridge the gap between people and animals that have to sometimes share the same space. 

Sometimes those calls are unexpected.

Like the time he got a call at 1 a.m. from residents who had returned home from out of town to find a snake under their bed. 

“You get your stuff on and you go out there. And you look under the bed and they’re like, ‘Careful it’s right underneath there,’ and they got their flashlights out trying to help you, kind of standing back, and you go underneath there and it’s like a sock or something like that,” Hernandez explained.

Not all calls are as benign as that one, and officers face a lot of challenges, and not all are from wildlife. One of the biggest challenges is fighting perceptions.

Animal Control Officer Michael Pennon said there still exists a negative perception about animal control officers, mostly because they serve in an enforcement capacity. 

Supervising Animal Control Officer Joe Avalos agreed, but he said always hopes that when he comes in contact with someone in the community they will have changed their mind after meeting him.

“We get that perception, but I think we can do our part through education. Maybe people have that perception when we roll up on them, but after we’ve talked to them for a few minutes hopefully they get the feeling that we are there to help,” Avalos said.

The fact of the matter is, while many people have a preconceived notion of the “dog catcher,” most animal control officers insist that they represent more than just “the pound.” 

The role of the animal control services officers

Animal control officers are tasked with the duty of maintaining a safe and healthy environment between humans and animals. Enforcement is a big part of that, especially when it comes to protecting those animals. However, that also means humans aren’t always happy to see them. Pennon said that enforcement often means issuing citations or simply educating pet owners. 

click to enlarge Into the wild: Armed with little more than a catchpole and a leash, animal services officers strive to maintain a balance between humans, pets, and wildlife
PHOTO BY SHELLY CONE
TOOLS OF THE TRADE: While animal control officers have a variety of tools at their disposal, including catchpoles, grabbers, and nets, the one they use most often, they say, is the leash.

The Santa Barbara County animal control officers are assigned three to a shift with someone available 24 hours a day. Each day for an animal control officer may start the same—with a conference call between the three county offices, then a check of priority calls to follow up on—but then anything can be in store for the day.

Much of what they do is complaint-driven. They get various calls from people reporting animal safety situations. Many times the calls come from people unfamiliar with animals—like when tourists driving by cattle grazing in fields alongside the freeway call to complain that the animals have no shelter or water. They might also get reports of a coyote sighting or that chickens are wandering the streets of a rural location like Los Alamos. Other times it could be a suspected case of neglect of a dog or cat.

It’s the officers’ job to do a welfare check on the animals.

On a recent afternoon, Pennon began his rounds with a routine pickup of a deceased owl at the Guadalupe Police Department, followed by a call to check the welfare of some horses on a pasture along Highway 101. The horses were reported to be skinny but turned out to be healthy, if not a little overweight. 

The rest of the day he followed up on people he’s already cited who may need to correct violations, and he also followed up on calls about strays and aggressive dogs. He called that a typical day, and admits it’s not a glamorous set of calls but they are a necessary part of the job of protecting animals from abuse or neglect. 

When things get scary

While some of the calls are pretty routine, there are still a lot of calls that bring excitement—and sometimes scares—to the job. 

click to enlarge Into the wild: Armed with little more than a catchpole and a leash, animal services officers strive to maintain a balance between humans, pets, and wildlife
PHOTO BY SHELLY CONE
STRAY: Animal Control Officer Michael Pennon plays with Topper, a stray he picked up during his patrols.

Avalos said he’s had some really scary calls where dogs have turned on their owners. “Calls where we assist police when they’re making an arrest or at a crime scene, those can be touchy situations,” Avalos said. 

Hernandez, and many other officers, know that too well. Hernandez recalled a situation in which the sheriff’s office wanted assistance to check the welfare of a woman who had a pit bull in her home, and deputies wanted him to secure the animal before they entered. However, deputies also had information that there may have been a husband or boyfriend with a firearm and possible access to it. 

“So the underlying theme was to be careful and watch your back,” Hernandez said. “So I got three deputies on my right and three deputies on my left and I’m kind of like down in the middle and I have my catchpole. And they’re like, ‘OK are you ready, we’re going to cover you.’ That kind of gets your adrenaline pumping.” 

Pennon also has had similar calls. Once he was told to secure a dog that was charging at police officers. The house was supposed to have been deemed clear by officers. Instead, once inside a bedroom securing the dog, the wanted man appeared out of a crawl space in the wall. Pennon said he started screaming at the man to get back, and fortunately the man thought Pennon was a police officer and threw his hands in the air.

“That was the scariest moment in my life,” he said.

click to enlarge Into the wild: Armed with little more than a catchpole and a leash, animal services officers strive to maintain a balance between humans, pets, and wildlife
PHOTO BY SHELLY CONE
ON THE JOB: Currently animal control officers use laptops to check in and out while on calls, but there is no dispatcher that tracks them, making officer safety a concern. Department officials said that will soon change with the addition of a dispatcher in the next few weeks.

On the lighter side, you never know what you’re going to get, Avalos said.

“I’ve had people prank me. They say, ‘There’s a dead cat over there on Lincoln Street.’ I go to pick it up and somebody put a stuffed animal there and spread ketchup on it,” Avalos said. “I’ve had calls where someone said, ‘There’s a loose mongoose running around my neighborhood.’ I said, ‘I think you have the wrong continent but I’ll check it out,’ and it turns out to be a ’possum or something like that. So you just never know.”

Pennon recalled an instance when he was still working in Dallas, Texas, when a man released his two pet tigers in a nightclub.

In that instance Pennon wasn’t able to intervene because it was a little beyond the scope of an animal control officer. Pennon had to convince the man to bring the tigers in himself, which he did and eventually had his exotic animal permit revoked.

That instance doesn’t hold the top spot in Pennon’s memory though. That distinction belongs to the time, while working in Wichita, Kan., that he had to rescue a bear cub. It started when a man bought a bear cub, which he kept in a dog crate in his garage. Soon the cub was able to break out of the crate when the man went inside to bed. The lonely cub began to cry and bang on the garage door.

Then one day Pennon got the call to respond. “His neighbors called the police and reported, ‘This guy has a werewolf or something in his garage. There’s something crazy in his garage.’” When police discovered it was a bear cub, they left the situation to Pennon. 

“As soon as I get in there this little thing just latches itself onto my leg, because it just wanted to be with someone. It didn’t want to be by itself.”

click to enlarge Into the wild: Armed with little more than a catchpole and a leash, animal services officers strive to maintain a balance between humans, pets, and wildlife
PHOTO BY SHELLY CONE
MORNING ROUTINE: Animal Control officers start every day with a conference call between the county’s three shelter offices.

He called that case his “all-star moment.” 

In Santa Barbara County things have been a lot smoother for Pennon, which he appreciates. He said he loves to get the calls about “huge pit bulls on the loose.” 

“You get there and all you have to do is bend down and he comes up to you wagging his tail. Those are the fun calls for me,” Pennon said. 

On the other hand, Hernandez said he enjoys the wildlife calls. Skunks, raccoons, snakes, and especially red tailed hawks. He’s into falconry so it’s interesting for him to see such birds. 

“One aspect of what we do is the wildlife calls. We get a lot of credit for the cats and dogs and bunnies and things like that … that’s usually what we do on a day-to-day basis. The wildlife stuff, to me, it’s few and far between, so I think that’s probably my favorite aspect of what we do,” he said.

The shelter

At the Santa Maria shelter where Pennon and Hernandez are based, dogs sit in kennels in the adoptable dogs area. The dogs have been assessed and deemed ready to go home to new owners. Classical music softly streams into the kennels, and most of the dogs seem calmer for it. It’s one method of making the animals more comfortable as they await adoption. 

click to enlarge Into the wild: Armed with little more than a catchpole and a leash, animal services officers strive to maintain a balance between humans, pets, and wildlife
PHOTO BY SHELLY CONE
CATCHPOLE: For the most aggressive dogs, a catchpole can help officers restrain the dog while still keeping a good distance. Bite marks on this catchpole show why that distance is important in some cases.

Another way is the Bark for Life program, a volunteer program that allows kids and teens to read to dogs, cats, and rabbits. Pennon said he had his doubts, but the program works. He said the dogs calmly sit and listen to the kids read—and even lick them. At the same time, kids gain literacy confidence through reading to the animals that they don’t feel are judging their skills. 

Such steps are important to Pennon whose lifelong love of animals makes his job special to him. He said the hardest part of his job is not knowing if he’s helping the way he wants to. 

“A lot of people in the this field don’t last because a lot of the people or the things you’re helping can’t speak back to you, so you don’t know exactly what’s hurting them. At some point in your career that gets fatiguing. Because you’re not getting any feedback about ‘am I helping you or not,'” he said, adding that it’s just a part of his personality, and of those around him to find the greater—and more positive—purpose in what they are doing. 

He also said he likes drawing on his own experience growing up with animals and using that to help educate pet owners in the community. “It’s just something I really enjoy,” he said. 

Editor Shelly Cone can be reached at [email protected].

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