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Dog Days

Their jobs are often brutal, but shelter workers do what needs to be done.

By Laura Dempsey DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Published: Monday, November 23, 1998 Series - Part 2 of 3


No. 1015: Mixed breed; tan. Stray, picked up in Miamisburg Feb. 12. Note on file: Finder interested in adopting dog. Does not want dog put to sleep. Finder called, still interested, will call to see if dog passes vet check. Nice dog! Male, not neutered.

Adopted Feb. 21, not by finder.


It's a job, like any other and like no other. The days and the dogs blur into a mass of incidents, some shockingly brutal, others merely routine.

Somehow, a dog or two gets taken home by a shelter worker, the mystery being how that one or two slipped past the invisible shell of resistance worn as protection by each member of the shelter staff.

WALLY NELSON DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Animal-care provider Penny Davis pets a dog released to the shelter by its owners for immediate euthanasia. Disease rendered her back legs useless.

For Bill Almashy, it was the Great Dane whose Kettering owner refused to pay the dog's outstanding tickets.

For Minnie Cuervo, it was a little white mutt picked up in Trotwood, where she lived.

For Ellen Paul, it's any dog that looks like an `Ellen' dog - the staff knows which ones they are, and keeps a collective eye out.

For Kay Mulvaney, it's any dog too old and too ugly for anybody else.

Even they can't explain why one was chosen, another passed over. The job is like that. Head down, get it done. Head up, and you're vulnerable - vulnerable to the abuse that can come from people who grossly misunderstand the problem. Vulnerable to ugliness from people who mean well but express it badly, people who take out their anger at the death of so many dogs on the people who are charged with keeping strays off their street. Vulnerable to feeling too deeply for the dogs to be able to do what has to be done.

So the workers at the Montgomery County Animal Shelter keep their heads down, for the most part, responding with `yes ma'am' and `yes sir' to insults and threats, reacting with careful, professional courtesy to cases of abuse and neglect.

One crack and it could be over. They know it. Heads down, they do their jobs.


No. 1235: Chow mix; tan. Stray, picked up in Dayton Feb. 21. Male, not neutered. Red dot, unacceptable temperament (timid).

Euthanized Feb. 25.


Animal-control officer Ellen Paul was working days, a 10-to-6 shift. Walking in the back door of the shelter, she clocks in, checks the communication log for staff messages and makes her rounds. `Hi' to the dispatcher, `Hi' to the clerks, then she pulls open the heavy door that separates clean, quiet shelter offices from the uncompromising noise and smell of the kennels.

`Hey there, bud,' she says, bending down to greet a happy mutt, scratching his nose and dropping a dog biscuit, a handful of which appears out of nowhere, into his cage. The mutt's tail thumps, and the cacophony begins.

Barks.

Whines.

Yelps.

Howls.

Someone's HERE someone's HERE someone's HERE.

They often ignore the biscuits. These dogs want their own `hey there, bud,' their own scratch on their own nose. Ellen moves down the line of cages, deftly directing her heavy brown boots in the aisle between the dog runs, on the left, and the smaller cages, on the right. She squeezes past Penny Davis, who's mopping a cage with disinfectant. Ellen puts in some extra time at the cages of the dogs she recognizes, the dogs that came in on her van.

She checks out the little girl beagle, called in by someone at Mad River Middle School. She was playing soccer with some kids; when Ellen arrived, she was lounging under a bleacher in the shade.

Ellen stops by the shy, skinny walker hound, caught in Moraine and held by police in the Sellars Road firehouse. The dog was terrified yesterday; she's better today.

Ellen checks out the black-and-white shaggy thing, found and held overnight by a woman whose kids brought the dog to Ellen's van, showing proudly how the dog could sit on command.

Those kids had begged Ellen: `Don't kill that dog. Please don't kill the dog.'

Ellen had made no promises. Make promises, she knows, `and you'll get called on it.' She told the kids the dog would be well cared-for. She didn't lie.

She stops to see King, a little brown mutt whose owner promised - promised - to pick him up before 6 p.m. today. The word on King was that he was left behind when his owners moved. But Ellen located his owner, who said King had been given to a woman in the country, and she said the dog bolted 45 minutes after the man left. The man was shocked to see King, amazed that the little dog had made it `home,' where he was waiting for his people to return. Ellen believed the guy; she saw how he loved that dog, and the dog most obviously loved him. She thinks he'll show up.


No. 7269: Mixed breed; black and white. Stray, picked up in Dayton Sept. 15. Male, not neutered.

Adopted Sept. 23.


Her rounds are complete. Ellen grabs her gear from her locker and loads up the van. Her canvas briefcase holds a book of blank citation forms, maps, license applications and licenses, the shelter's brown employee handbook, various and sundry pieces of paperwork accumulated over the months. She's got a collection of dog collars, and she's never without a box of biscuits and assorted cat and dog food in easy-to-open cans.

`Dogs love cat food,' she says. She goes nowhere without her basic equipment, the thick leash-rope and the standard-issue restraining pole with its thick, retractable wire noose.

`I was on vacation with some friends, and they were like, `Look at the beautiful ocean,' and I said, `Ooh - there's a stray dog,'' she laughs.

She also carries a bolt cutter, because sometimes it's the only thing that will work on a chain embedded in a dog's neck.

As she pulls out of the shelter garage, Ellen checks her priority calls, given to her in the office by the dispatcher. Once on the road, she'll be in constant contact via radio, recording mileage and response times, checking validity of licenses.

Her day will take her to Dayton's Edgemont neighborhood, where a neighbor will share information on anyone and everyone in the vicinity, and to a Moraine trailer park, where a rottweiler is loose. She'll check out a woman's report of a pack of dogs that killed her cat - sure enough, the cat is there, dead on the woman's porch, wrapped in a baby blanket. The pack, of course, is long gone.

She'll check out the report of two loose rottweilers walking down a street off North Main. She finds the dogs, tired and penned in their back yard, and talks to the owner, who admits they got loose. The two rottweilers and the owner's other dog, a chow, wear valid licenses. She'll reassure the woman who called that the dogs are confined, and she'll give that woman a ticket after discovering her dog to be unlicensed.

She'll fix a fence and sell a license to a man who needed the money to pay his rent, but who wanted to do right by his dog. She'll be called unprintable names by children, and she'll philosophize widely about the world.

About humans: `People are on a spectrum (she holds her hands wide apart). The people on one end, they're the ones who shouldn't even have stuffed animals. Then I'm on the other end. If most people would just fall somewhere in the middle, it would be all right.'

About dogs: `Sometimes it's just about smarts. You've got to let them know you're smarter than they are. And sometimes it isn't easy. Dogs understand."

About Montgomery County: `There are some parts of town ... some really bad parts, where the mentality is like, `take my wife, take my kids - but touch my dog, I'll kill you!'

About the job: `It's not that I like seeing dogs get put to sleep. I don't. It breaks my heart - I hope I never get used to it. But the reunions ... when someone comes in and finds their dog, says they've been looking for it for a month, or when we match up a dog with something from the newspaper. It still gives me goosebumps....'

About tricks of the trade: `Kids and mail carriers - they're my favorites. They know where every dog lives.'

And about herself: `I love this job. I found a niche.'


No. 6999: Mixed breed; blonde. Stray, picked up in Dayton Sept. 4. Male, not neutered. Note on file: Wound on left rear foot .

Euthanized Sept. 9.


Ellen Paul is one of 10 full-time animal-control officers whose territory is the entirety of Montgomery County. The officers staff the shelter 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on a schedule that has them working nights, days, and in between on a six-week rotation. There's no such thing as a typical day, and no call is like any other.

Ellen has seen it all. She starts to steam when asked for the story behind the paperwork on her dash, paperwork she needs for a year-old case involving a boxer found chained in a back yard without water or shade, dead from the summer heat by the time neighbors called it in. The owner is facing charges; the paperwork will be part of the court proceedings.

`We left the guy a note on his door, explaining we'd removed his dog, that it was dead. This guy had the nerve to call and ask if we had any boxer pups available for adoption.' She shakes her head, still incredulous a year later. This is what she deals with. This is just one of her stories.

`Originally, I wanted to work with kids. I thought about going into social work,' she says. `I've seen how people treat their dogs. If I had to deal with them treating kids ... I'd have to whale on them."

Ellen has been an animal-control officer for 12 years. She makes about $30,000 a year. She's on a mission, one she shares with the entire shelter staff.

`The goal of the job is to be out of a job.

`If I ever win the lottery, the shelter will be out of business. There will be no such thing as an unadoptable dog. If they're `unadoptable,' they'll just come live with me.'


No. 2760: Husky mix; gray. Stray, picked up in Dayton April 21. Male, not neutered. Note on file: Dog picked up in back yard of house, removed for lack of proper confinement. Left card for owner. Owner called April 27, said she'd moved and given the dog away on April 10 to kids in the neighborhood but could not tell who they were. Owner cannot keep dog where she lives now. Dog was sneezing.

Euthanized April 29.


`I'm sorry ma'am, you have to understand,' says Bill Almashy, manning the phones as the day's dispatcher. He listens, nodding to himself, and tries to break in again.

`I know, ma'am, but....'

It's hopeless. The woman is upset, and he will not be able to calm her.

Her call came in minutes after Almashy took another, from a Vandalia resident whose county-supplied wild-animal trap was full. Raccoon. Come and get it, she said.

Almashy had just dispatched an animal-control officer to the address when the second call came in.

`Ma'am, it's our job. The woman requested the trap and it's our job to take care of it.'

The story is simple: Neighbors on opposite sides of raccoon issue. To one neighbor they're a nuisance. She wants them gone, and to that end she requested a trap from Montgomery County be placed on her property. She lives in Vandalia, one of the cities that contracts with the county for wild-animal disposal, so her request was granted.

Her neighbor can't understand. They're not hurting anything or anyone, she argues. They shouldn't be trapped and killed - for that is, in fact, what happens to them - for doing what they have to do. We live in their space. We're the visitors here. Leave them alone.

Almashy tries again to explain.

`Ma'am, we have no choice. No, ma'am, if we put a defective trap out there she'd just request another one. No, ma'am, we can't release them in the wild. We can't.'

He's obviously frustrated, torn between understanding - perhaps even empathy - for the racoon sympathizer, and doing his job.

`I'm sorry, ma'am. I really am.'

The phone call ends, the woman having received no satisfaction from Almashy.

He shakes his head, and shrugs. `There really is nothing we can do. That lady requested that trap.'

He turns to the radio and calls the officer dispatched to bring in the trapped racoon.

`There's a neighbor there who's not too happy about what's going on,' he says. `Just FYI. It may get hairy out there.'


No. 7899: Chow mix; black. Stray, picked up in Dayton Oct. 7. Female, not spayed. Note on file: Owner moved and abandoned dog. Letter posted on front door, letter mailed Oct. 8. Telephone information (411) had no listing. Dog in heat.

Euthanized Oct. 13.


Almashy is the shelter's chief dispatch officer. The job is grueling, frustrating and extraordinarily stressful at times, as county residents call in complaints, emergencies, sightings of strays. Some people want directions, another phone number or to place a fast-food order - wrong numbers happen.

He follows a list of priorities in organizing the calls - safety and health of the public being No. 1. But his judgment is crucial; his patience is mandatory. He needs information, often from people who want something done but who don't want to get involved.

He's been threatened often. When he was on the street as an animal-control officer, someone `came at me, swinging a chain, to keep me from taking the neighbor's dog, and it was the neighbor who called!'

Three days in a row, a voice on the phone said, `If you come to my house again I'll kill you.'

`Nobody wants (the dispatcher) job,' he says with a grin. `They pat me on the back and say, `Here, you can have it.'' Almashy took the job for the regular day hours so that he could pursue his Police Academy training at night.

This day, many callers are irate, having expected an immediate response to their earlier call of a fluffy white dog roaming their street.

`We cover the entire county,' Almashy will explain over and over. `It's a large area.'


No. 2163: Bull terrier; red-brown. Picked up in Trotwood in response to call from property owner, March 30. Male, not neutered. Note on file: Dog's owner moved to Springfield, dog abandoned. Dog had severe case of mange.

Euthanized March 30.


John Crouch volunteers his time at the shelter. He's one of the loyals who took the training and made the commitment. He's there about 30 hours a week. Every week.

The shelter would seem to exist as a magnet for animal-loving folk. Other Dayton-area organizations - the Society for the Improvement of the Conditions of Stray Animals (SICSA) and the Humane Society - are run mainly by volunteers. But shelter director Stephanie Smith was wary of any volunteer program that appealed to what she called the `warm and fuzzy' side of human nature. The shelter is not a warm and fuzzy place.

`I didn't want to make it too easy for people,' she says, so she made it tough enough that only the most devoted would stick it out.

She enlisted the services of Ann Johnson, who really wasn't looking for something else to do. Johnson works for the county in a different capacity, as assistant to the County Commission. But Stephanie Smith can be persuasive.

`Stephanie is such a character,' Ann says, `But really, I'm an animal lover.' Plus, she was familiar with the shelter from commission business, so she knew the place and how it was run.

`Stephanie's concern was that we could keep enough control.'

It was important that the dogs be walked and treated with consistency, that one volunteer's method of teaching a command didn't conflict with another's. No one was arguing that the dogs would benefit from additional human contact; it's undeniable that a dog who walks on a leash and sits on command makes an eminently more attractive prospect for a successful adoption.

To that end, the shelter contracted with Pet Behavior Services, a nonprofit organization of `intellectual dog people,' in Smith's words, people who spend time on how a dog thinks, not just what a dog does. They set up a program for prospective volunteers that included a tour of the shelter and several hours of classroom and hands-on training.

It also includes a tour of the shelter.

`We lose a lot of people after that,' says Johnson. `They can't face it. And it's true they euthanize here, but there's a much more important thing going on: It's the staff, taking beautiful care of the animals.'

There's a core group of 20 people who've made the commitment to weekly hours. They come in through the back and head to the front, where the cages holding the dogs available for adoption are kept.

Anita Wood comes twice a week for a few hours at a time. She walks the dogs, teaches them - or attempts to teach them - basic `sit' and `stay' commands. Sometimes she just plays with them. They need it.

`Maybe I should be home with my own dogs,' she laughs, as the shepherd-mix puppy at her feet rolls himself into a tangle with his leash. `I wanted to do some volunteer work, and I wasn't crazy about doing it with people.' She smiles. `I love animals.'

John Crouch is one of the more familiar volunteers at the shelter, often working more than 100 hours a month. According to Smith, his experience is a perfect example of what she feared would happen with volunteers, and what she hoped would happen with volunteers.

`He caught me before I even got in the door,' she recalls. `He came storming out, waving this cage card in his hand. It was the card for a dog he'd been working with, and it had been euthanized.'

The dog had gotten sick while waiting for adoption, and shelter rules required it to be killed.

`He said, `You mean I could come in one day and find out that a dog I was working with, a dog I knew, had been euthanized?' I said, `Yup.'

`He cried. I cried. And I explained to him again.... In the beginning, he just had to trust my judgment. Now, through the months, I believe he knows from the inside out that that is what we have to do.'

Smith pauses. `People always say we get cold and callous toward this. It's not that at all. But it is something I have to keep reminding the staff about - we do forget how abhorrent it was at the beginning. You just learn to deal with those feelings.

`Like I told John, our job then is to stop this from happening, and in order for it to stop happening we have to talk to every single person we come in contact with.'

Spay. Neuter. License. And repeat.


No. 2555: Mixed terrier-pit bull; black, brown and white. Released to shelter by Jefferson Twp. owner, behavior problems, April 13. Male, not neutered.

Euthanized April 14.


Inside the shelter, Penny Davis punches the time clock, then heads back to the clinic to unfold newspapers. She lays them flat and begins to assemble the stack she'll use to line the cages it's her duty to clean.

Davis is new to the job. She's been at work about three months, but by now she's deep into the rhythm of the place, moving with its daily groove.

She cleans her share of the 260 cages stacked in the shelter's three wards, lifting out each dog and hooking it to a rope at the end of the line of dog runs. She removes the cage's soiled paper before rinsing, disinfecting, rinsing again and squeegeeing the pooled water onto the slick, smooth floor. The cages are taken care of one at a time, and by the time they're done it's past time to begin again.

Penny's animal-care duties are put on hold again and again for innumerable interruptions, including walking people through the wards, people who come to the shelter looking for their lost dog. When a dog is reunited with its owner, it's a happy time. Still, it's not an easy place to work. `There's a very high turnover in the kennels,' says Donna Wilson, who supervises the kennel and office. `Some people just can't take it.'

For her part, Davis has come to terms.

When she took the job, her friends reacted with alarm. Said one: `So, you're going to be a dog killer, huh?'


No. 4586: Mixed breed; brindled. Released to shelter for court-ordered destruction, June 23. Male, neutered.

Euthanized June 23.


`It takes someone to come in here to understand,' Davis says, a convert to the cause that no one entering the shelter can escape. `It's here or the streets for these dogs. It's here you see some of the bad things.... Once you get here, you realize why it's done.'

The `it' of which she speaks is euthanasia, the intentional killing of dogs. Davis is blunt in her assignment of blame: `It's done because of irresponsible pet owners.'

She starts to get angry, then collects herself, remembering her training. Remembering she is speaking with a guest. Head down. `But you can't be judgmental,' she says. `You just can't.'

Today, Penny's got a thing for Ace, an overweight black Labrador whose history is a little murky.

`He's supposed to be a Chicago rescue dog,' she says. `I don't know, looking for fire victims or something. His owners were here visiting or something and he got out - the owners' daughter is supposed to come get him.'

A complete set of tags hangs from Ace's collar. Rabies vaccine. Cook County license. Ace is somebody's dog. But until they come claim him, he lives in a 4-by-5 pen in Vandalia.

`The first time I saw him, he sat up, just sat right up,' Penny says, stroking the big dog's head. `He can do all sorts of tricks. They said they were going to come get him....'

And Ace just waits.


No. 8010: Basset hound; brown and white. Stray, picked up in Clayton, Oct. 11. Female, not spayed. In heat.

Euthanized Oct. 15.


Part Three:
   At the shelter, good comes with the bad in an almost bearable balance.


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