Chigworthy
08-29-2009, 10:58 PM
Animal Control can be a thankless job. Whether it's hiking to remote homeless encampments to find vicious dogs and their lying owners, interviewing severely-traumatized children as they are getting gaping dog bites sewn up in the ER, performing field euthanasia at 3 in the morning, retrieving pets from a house that contains the 5-day old corpse of the owner, herding pea-brained cattle off of foggy roads before someone gets killed, etc, there are a lot of things that tend to wear on you. But the worst part is dealing with people like the woman I dealt with tonight.
I work standby shifts after my regular day shift, which means getting paged out to emergency calls after hours. I am 36 hours into an 82 hour shift and I get a call that a man has found an injured pit bull that may have been hit by a car. From tag information on the dog's collar, I advise the good samaritan that the dog belongs to a house a few blocks from his. He offers to walk up to the address and attempt to return the dog to it's owner while I suit up and get ready to roll out. He calls me back shortly and states that he found no one at the house, but he did find a dog bed and food and water on their front porch, with no visible means of confining the dog safely. These people went out on a Saturday night and left their dog on the front porch with no fence. Both the good sam and I leave voice mail for the owners advising them of the situation.
45 minutes and 20 miles later, I arrive and find the good sam to be extremely concerned, as he found the dog on a road that has a 50 mph speed limit and heavy Saturday night traffic as people return from a drunken summer day at the beach. The dog can not put any weight on a leg and is whining in pain. I transport the dog another 20 miles to the after hours emergency vet to rule out life threatening internal injuries. The doctor determines that the leg injury may be a chronic injury leading to atrophy, and that most likely the dog was not hit by a car. I transport the dog another 10 miles to our facility and impound it.
3 hours later, I'm back home contemplating getting a few hours sleep before the pager goes off again. Keep in mind, I am covering an entire county by myself, a county of half a million people and 2000 square miles. At 11 PM, my work cell rings. It is the dog owner, and she is not happy. I advise her that both the good sam and I went well out of our way to attempt to return the dog to them, but were unable to do so. Apparently, it is my fault that they allowed their dog to run at large near an extremely busy road, a dog that has trouble walking on an injury that it becomes clear the owner is well aware of. I advise the owner that she will not be able to reclaim her dog for two days, as the shelter is not open to the public until then. She pulls a common trick of telling me that they need to take the dog to a vet appointment and that the dog is on medication for it's injury. Do you have an appointment with a vet? Of course not. Her bullshit story is that they were going to drive three hundred (!) miles to see a specialist without an appointment. Ok, what medication is your dog on? Well, it's not medication, it's glucosamine, a common homeopathic remedy for arthritis. I explained that she can speak with a supervisor about possibly setting up a special appointment for her to reclaim the dog based on the medical condition, but I cannot guarantee anything.
For the next ten minutes, I am told that the bureaucracy of my department will now cause a monetary hardship for them, and that it's not their fault that the dog left their property, and that I should have just tied the dog up at their house, and that I should have known that the dog had not been hit by a car. And of course, she hangs up on me. Lovely woman.
This occupation is immensely rewarding in that you are presented with opportunities to help people constantly, but the occasional asshole can really fuck up your night.
I work standby shifts after my regular day shift, which means getting paged out to emergency calls after hours. I am 36 hours into an 82 hour shift and I get a call that a man has found an injured pit bull that may have been hit by a car. From tag information on the dog's collar, I advise the good samaritan that the dog belongs to a house a few blocks from his. He offers to walk up to the address and attempt to return the dog to it's owner while I suit up and get ready to roll out. He calls me back shortly and states that he found no one at the house, but he did find a dog bed and food and water on their front porch, with no visible means of confining the dog safely. These people went out on a Saturday night and left their dog on the front porch with no fence. Both the good sam and I leave voice mail for the owners advising them of the situation.
45 minutes and 20 miles later, I arrive and find the good sam to be extremely concerned, as he found the dog on a road that has a 50 mph speed limit and heavy Saturday night traffic as people return from a drunken summer day at the beach. The dog can not put any weight on a leg and is whining in pain. I transport the dog another 20 miles to the after hours emergency vet to rule out life threatening internal injuries. The doctor determines that the leg injury may be a chronic injury leading to atrophy, and that most likely the dog was not hit by a car. I transport the dog another 10 miles to our facility and impound it.
3 hours later, I'm back home contemplating getting a few hours sleep before the pager goes off again. Keep in mind, I am covering an entire county by myself, a county of half a million people and 2000 square miles. At 11 PM, my work cell rings. It is the dog owner, and she is not happy. I advise her that both the good sam and I went well out of our way to attempt to return the dog to them, but were unable to do so. Apparently, it is my fault that they allowed their dog to run at large near an extremely busy road, a dog that has trouble walking on an injury that it becomes clear the owner is well aware of. I advise the owner that she will not be able to reclaim her dog for two days, as the shelter is not open to the public until then. She pulls a common trick of telling me that they need to take the dog to a vet appointment and that the dog is on medication for it's injury. Do you have an appointment with a vet? Of course not. Her bullshit story is that they were going to drive three hundred (!) miles to see a specialist without an appointment. Ok, what medication is your dog on? Well, it's not medication, it's glucosamine, a common homeopathic remedy for arthritis. I explained that she can speak with a supervisor about possibly setting up a special appointment for her to reclaim the dog based on the medical condition, but I cannot guarantee anything.
For the next ten minutes, I am told that the bureaucracy of my department will now cause a monetary hardship for them, and that it's not their fault that the dog left their property, and that I should have just tied the dog up at their house, and that I should have known that the dog had not been hit by a car. And of course, she hangs up on me. Lovely woman.
This occupation is immensely rewarding in that you are presented with opportunities to help people constantly, but the occasional asshole can really fuck up your night.