How much training do animal control officers get?

In Virginia they are required to get 40 hours sometime during their first two years on the job. There's a lot of 'courtroom demeanor,' (comb your hair, don't tell the judge to bug off if he annoys you ...), a couple of hours instruction in using a catch pole ... I believe there are about two hours on basic animal husbandry.

We won't even discuss the selection criteria for the job.

The root problem here is that animal control selection and training are still back in the 1950's when "He couldn't even get a job as a dog catcher" was a common way to call someone stupid, while the job itself has made ever-greater demands.

Back in the 50's it really was just catching dogs -- and recognizing the occasional case of someone beating his horse or setting a cat on fire. Today we expect animal control to second guess breeders and farmers with decades of experience and in the case of farmers, very often college level work in animal husbandry. It's basically a joke, one that's only funny when the weakest animal control officers stick to catching dogs and stay out of the way of people who have a clue, namely, those who do it every day and cannot meet their goals with animals that aren't in top condition.

Then take a girl who couldn't get a job as a dog catcher but does get through veterinary school, where, you guessed it, she gets essentially no training in small animal husbandry. And she can't immediately find a practice to join when she graduates or wants the security of a government job. Where might she work? Why the state department of agriculture, that's where -- inspecting dog breeders, and with the power to declare "Seize them all!"

The large animal vets do get some husbandry training: I don't think you can graduate in one of those programs without pulling a calf out of a cow. But I don't believe the small animal vets even see a whelping, let alone study nutrition and care of dogs, cats, etc.

I know this: I haven't encountered a single vet who is familiar with the use of fenbendazole pre- and post-whelp to eliminate roundworms in neonates. We think it makes a real difference: In four or so generations, a couple of litters per, outcrossing every time, our puppies all tend to be real bruisers, right from the start. Logically that's because they don't have to share their nutrition with a bunch of rapidly-developing worms. And we've never seen a single worm in stools when we do use a conventional wormer on them once, right before they go home.

Where did we find that protocol? Why in Ettinger and Feldman, the standard veterinary textbook, that's where.

To be fair, most animal control officers mean well and know their limitations. They know the job is stopping the "we know it when we see it" serious abuse and enforcing basic confinement laws and they stick to that. Most of them actually have good hearts and want to do it right. But the exceptions -- the cases where the semi-qualified majority and ignorant or zealot few -- have to check out breeding programs and care of dozens or hundreds of breeding animals -- are often horrific.

If we truly want breeders inspected then we need to stop passing inspection laws and spend the money that the 'wipe out visible breeding' program costs on upgrading our animal control officers. If we don't think this is really essential -- and I'm among those who feel that inspection of small breeders who sell only directly is a waste of money and an infringement on basic rights -- then we need to just cut it out. If there's a serious complaint, get a warrant and go take a look, otherwise, let it be.

So far, the average taxpayer says "They're dog catchers -- spend less on them." And with Oprah's help, HSUS says "inspect-inspect-inspect." And we go with both programs.

Visible imperfection is a consequence of freedom. The alternative is perfect corruption with the worst sins hidden, under some degree of slavery. You'd think that in the new century we'd be a lot clearer about the merits of these alternatives than seems to be the case.

The Truth About (Most) Shelters and Pounds

Many of us came to pet-law because of bad experience with animal control or animal shelters. Most of the rest of us know stories that would curl your hair. But there is a danger that we make exactly the mistake that some people at the worst shelters do: assume that everyone with a certain label (like 'breeder,' 'pet owner,' or 'shelter worker') is evil.

First, it simply isn't true. Each such label covers a wide spectrum of people and attitudes. In fact, the majority of breeders, owners, and shelter workers are sincere and good hearted people doing the best they can with their respective duties.

And secondly, one universal truth is that wrong assumptions lead to bad results. Those animal control personnel who believe all breeders are exploitive abusers and/or all owners are irresponsible idiots, cause more damage than they do good through their mistrust. And exactly the same will be true if we make unreasonably bad assumptions.

Virginia's a large enough state to offer a reasonable example. Guessing from the number of counties, we have over 100 public shelters of some sort. There are three or four that are run by hard core AR types and some others that have problematic people or policies but the majority are doing the best they can in the circumstances. Some of them set examples to all of us: The shelter in our area has been getting steadily closer to no-kill since before no-kill was cool.

They haven't done it through tricks like shipping less-adoptable dogs somewhere else to be killed, either. It has been 100% via hard work -- use of PetFinders (mostly outside of paid work hours), participation in shelter transport programs, advertising of dogs, and cooperation with rescue, breeders, and others.

I'm sure much of the problem is that we hear a lot more about problem shelters than we do the good ones, but of course that's exactly the same defense that the problem shelters can offer: "We only see the bad owners and the messed-up dogs they dump on us."

Shelter work is hard in general and doing it right is very hard. It insults the very people and organizations who least deserve it when we talk as if they were all trying to kill as many as they can while making owners walk over hot coals. Can't we do better?

What We Can Do

Postings on blogs and email lists about abusive (most of them do seem to be legal) raids are important. If we don't know what's happening out there, then we cannot act to make things better.

Stopping the 'theft' (it mostly isn't real theft) of private property will happen when animal owners learn what their rights are, and insist on those rights. Informing other owners is one of the most important things that pet-law folks can do.

We have 3000-some people on the Pet-Law list. If one out of every ten wrote a letter to the editor calmly pointing out that the reported facts don't support the actions taken, and that in fact, when animals are sold within a week because 'they're in good shape except for a few ticks' (or similar non-issues) there's evidence that the seizure action was unjustified, we'd be doing something useful. 300 letters on the same subject to the same editor -- that would get attention!

When a judge says "Nobody can take care of 1000 dogs," that judge is disqualifying himself from any proceeding concerning a large number of dogs. One letter pointing that out might not even be printed, but 300 would make something happen at most papers.

My guess is that these letters aren't being written.

But letters to editors aren't the only thing we can do. All of us are active on other email lists for pet owners. Are we doing the education there?

1. Abusive seizures of animals are increasing fast.

2. You have rights; you must know what they are and you must exercise them. (with a summary and links to more ...)

My guess is that very few of us are doing that boring but essential education.

Have you offered to talk about the subject at your local kennel or cat club? Passed out and discussed George E.'s "What to do when ..."?

Of course the best place to stop this rubbish is at the source: Are you involved with your animal shelter? Do you support them publicly when they do good things and try to influence them to change when they get it wrong? Any chance you could become a member of the board of directors? A board member who asks for an explanation of a seizure that smells fishy in the newspaper account can do much to prevent these actions.

We cannot all do all of these things -- none of us have that much time and we have different talents. But all of us can do something -- if not something mentioned above, something else equally good or better.

THERE IS NO MAGIC BUTTON WE CAN PUSH TO MAKE THE PROBLEMS GO AWAY WITHOUT OUR HAVING TO DO ANY WORK. We have our rights; who is responsible when we allow them to be abused?

A guy comes up to you on the street:

"Scuse me, lady, but would you give me your purse?"

"Why?"

"Well, because I need money and I might steal it if you don't give it to me."

"Oh ... okay, here it is."

Would anyone here actually do that?

A cop pulls you over. He walks up to your window and says "You were doing 66 in a 35 mph zone. You can either give me your keys and sign over your title to me, or I'm going to write you up for a whopping fine." Your actual speed was 36. Would you take the cop's deal?

But to judge by the stories here, many animal owners are doing things equally stupid. Stupid actions are a self-inflicted wound and in cases involving the law, it can be near-impossible to heal that wound.

I am not blaming the victim, but when people stand in harm's way (by not knowing and exercising their rights) and they are harmed, they do have some responsibility. What we're seeing repeatedly here is $1000 or $10,000 cases being turned into cases that would cost $100,000-up to fight, by the victim's own actions in the first 15 minutes -- and a frequent response (here) is "There should be someone out there to give us the $100,000."

We can be sympathetic to this person, but we're not likely to find that $100,000, and if we did, there would be ways to use it that would prevent dozens or hundreds of such cases in the future.

Someone wrote, "The only idea I have is to have my shot gun at the door with plenty of ammo. Someone is going to get hurt. But what else can we do?"

This is dangerous to the point of irresponsibility. If a cop sees a weapon near at hand, and you make any movement toward it, you may very well be shot. If that doesn't happen, then (a) you've given that cop justification to make an immediate search, and (b) you're going to be facing far worse than the usual sorts of animal charges.

Of course the cop's actions will be investigated; maybe it will be decided that he overreacted. But if you're dead, that won't be much comfort.

I won't repeat George's advice on handling of authorities coming to your door. But we must stay within the law to avoid making the situation worse and introducing a weapon will make things far possibly fatally -- worse.

No, our constitution is not being destroyed, as some have said. No, it is all about the willingness of many citizens to allow others to ignore the Constitution, because learning your rights and saying "No" is more trouble than saying "Oh, whatever" and then complaining about how you were mistreated.

The Constitution isn't destroyed or even damaged when we allow bad people to violate its protections. It is simply unused. Whose responsibility is that?

I'm thirsty. There's a pump in the backyard: I could go out and work the handle, but I'd rather sit here and complain about my thirst. Please -- tell me how badly I'm being treated!

This all sounds terribly unsympathetic. The problem is, sympathy and armwaving isn't going to do us any good. So we spend a few hours a week agreeing with each other about how unfair it all is ... That might make us feel a bit better -- at least, morally justified in our sense of violation. But it wouldn't do a damn thing to help prevent the next "nobody can care for 1000 (or 100, or 10) dogs" raid.

Got 50 -- Friends who know how to handle an animal control knock on their doors?