Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9404030073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
By Friday, all their food is gone.
But when Animal Control Chief Ken Hogan shows up, the two abandoned dogs are more interested in his attention than the dog biscuits he tosses out.
"You'd rather have someone pet you than feed you, you sorry thing," Hogan says to the friendlier one.
They're at the top of rural Merriman Road in Southwest Roanoke County, at a drive closed off by a gate. The turn-around by the gate is a popular dumping ground, with trash and beer bottles strewn around.
Someone decided it was a good place to dump pets as well.
A 20-pound bag of dog food - empty now except for a puddle from the morning downpour - lies near the dogs. Perhaps it was the last act of kindness their owner could muster.
With loyalty only dogs display, they have been sleeping next to the gate, patiently keeping a vigil for their owner.
The big male dog, a patchwork of border collie, hound and who knows what, comes to Hogan's calls eagerly, happy for some human affection. The other dog, a female beagle, dances around just out of arm's reach with her tail wagging, wanting to be petted, but leery of this stranger.
"You get some like that - they want so bad for someone to pet 'em, but they're so scared," he says.
Hogan grabs the larger dog and locks him in one of the cages on the back of the truck. The beagle won't be as easily nabbed, so he gets a large metal trap and throws chunks of canned food to her. The tan-and-black dog shies farther away.
"I hate to turn him loose," Hogan says, pointing to the cage, "but that's what I'm going to do if I don't get her in that trap."
That's against the rules. But it's obvious the dogs have been looking out for each other, and it's late afternoon. The beagle has been abandoned once already, and Hogan is reluctant to take away her companion and leave her alone overnight.
He drives down the road and waits.
"This is one of those situations that's not in the book," Hogan muses, sitting in his idling truck. "I guess it's a decision made from the heart, whether you want to separate these dogs right now or want to come back when you have more time" and try to trap them.
Ten minutes later, the beagle is scarfing up the food in the trap, but hasn't stepped on the lever that will drop the door. She jumps out of the trap when Hogan's truck returns.
Compassion triumphs over policy. Hogan lets the bigger dog out of the cage, and the reunited dogs dance happily around each other. Then they settle down to resume their wait for a ride home.
Hogan picks up the trap and climbs back into his truck. He'll try again later. The big dog will be just as easy to catch a second time, he says.
"It looks like he's a sucker for a friendly pet."
The Roanoke County Board of Supervisors is hashing out the wording of a cat ordinance that likely will be passed this month, adding another species for the Animal Control Department to handle.
"With a cat ordinance, this thing is going to double our workload," Hogan predicts.
Last year, animal control workers logged 6,000 calls - an average of more than 100 a week - about dogs, cows, goats, horses, snakes, the occasional bear. They get plenty of cat calls too, but aren't authorized to respond to them.
Supervisors are divided over whether to add more staff to the four-member department to handle cats. They've freed up some time by relieving the department of calls about nondomesticated animals, such as an injured deer or a bear.
But it's hard not to respond to those calls when there's only one game warden covering the whole Roanoke Valley to deal with wild animals. The county and Salem each have four animal-control officers, and Roanoke has six.
Complaints about barking dogs and dogs running at large take up most of their time. Cruelty cases are rare, and "most are ignorance rather than cruelty," Hogan says - such as people who don't leave water for their dog in the summer.
A dispatcher radios to say that a caller complained that "a dog bit her vehicle."
Hogan radios back, "Let's put the car to sleep and send it back to Detroit and see if it has rabies."
"Ten-four," the dispatcher deadpans.
People tell Hogan what a great job he has, that they wish they could do it, because they love animals. But, he says, "You could not like animals and do this job."
It might make it easier, in fact. Hogan doesn't come across as a bleeding-heart animal lover, but his heart's obviously in the job.
A Roanoke County native, he's been an animal control officer almost 26 years.
Before the county began contracting with the Roanoke Valley Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 10 or 12 years ago, the officers had to take care of the animals they picked up - cleaning, feeding and euthanizing them. Hogan's glad to be free of those duties - especially the killing.
"You cannot do [that] every day, because sooner or later it's going to get to you," he says. "Nobody's ever seen an ugly puppy. You'd get some jerkhead who'd come in with a box of puppies. . . . I used to wake up at night seeing those things."
The SPCA and animal control work together, but they have different jobs, he says. "Their goal's to protect animals from people. Our main goal's to protect people from those animals."
His own dog - a female black Labrador retriever he took in after her owner went to jail and left her running around the neighborhood - is 12 and can barely walk because of a pelvic injury from a car accident years ago.
"It's getting to the point we need to put her down, but I can't do it."
It takes only a few minutes for the shot to down him.
The German shepherd had let his guard down and fallen asleep, his injured body stretched out in the sun in his new friends' yard.
"He just showed up in the neighborhood three weeks ago," says a Pitzer Road resident whose dogs had shared their food and water with the once-white shepherd.
Too skittish to allow anyone to grab him, he is caught after Animal Control Officer Don Kelley sinks a tranquilizer dart into the stray's hip. With two officers in pursuit, he lopes across the road before the drug takes effect.
He runs into the back yard of a tiny white dog, tied outside, wearing a red, purple and green sweater. The shepherd stops next to the mutt before turning to look in a tranquilized haze at the pursuing officers.
The scene says it all: Some dogs get dressed up; some dogs get discarded.
The shepherd falters long enough for Kelley to get a long-handled noose around the dog's neck and lead him to the truck for a ride to the SPCA shelter.
Animal control officers use their tranquilizer guns only two or three times a year, Hogan says, on dogs too skittish or wily to be grabbed or trapped. "I don't like to do it. It's hard on the animal."
The rural Mount Pleasant neighborhood is a popular dumping ground with irresponsible pet owners, explains the neighbor who called animal control, who asked that her name not be used. At this time of year, cars frequently pull up at night, and pets get shoved out.
"It's a real problem. But people do that to their kids, too," she says. "People leave their babies in trash cans. If they don't care about their kids, they're certainly not going to care about their animals."
The shepherd has been limping, and his demeanor suggests he's been abused. Since showing up in the neighborhood, he's made friends with other dogs. The neighbors say he hasn't been a problem, other than eating their pets' food.
But, the woman says, "It's just a fact; any stray animal can go back in the woods and get bit [by a rabid animal] and come back and infect our pets."
Another neighbor comes over to ask Hogan what he would have to do to adopt the dog. His family used to breed German shepherds, and this one looks like a purebred.
"He's a good-looking dog," the man says. "He'll probably get adopted real quick down at the shelter."
Animal control is often looked down on by the public and by other law-enforcement agencies - at least until someone needs help with a vicious dog.
"It goes back to [the old idea of] the dog catcher - any idiot can be one," Hogan says. "Things over the years have been modernized. We've got mandated training in the state, like police officers. We've come a long way."
Hogan is on the faculty of the regional training school and was one of the key players in getting the state to require training for officers.
His county department has four officers and a $176,000 budget, patrolling six days a week.
As department head, Hogan spends most of his time in the office. Today is a treat. He's switched with one of his officers, who is staffing the office in Hogan's place.
"I spent 20 years on the road," Hogan says, "so I don't cherish being in the office all the time."
Hogan heads over to Canter Drive in the Canterbury Park subdivision, where neighbors are upset about a dog running loose. It's one Hogan has dealt with before.
"I don't know what he's doing now, 'cause he's done killed all the cats in the neighborhood."
The dog was tearing through people's yards and, earlier in the week, attacked a smaller dog.
The smaller dog isn't a favorite in the neighborhood, either. It's been run over by the mailman and the paper carrier and attacked by bigger dogs. Nothing's going to kill it, a neighbor says - "it's the orneriest little dog."
Hogan drives to the house where a neighbor thinks the roaming dog lives. He knows the neighborhood - he points out the back yard where they had to tranquilize three black Angus steers that had gotten loose. No one's home but the dog, "a big old hound," which comes to the window when Hogan rings the bell. He leaves his card for the owner to call him.
"About two out of 10 will," he says. "Most of them know why we're there, and they won't call."
People often call about a dog when they're mad at a neighbor.
"Most of our job is PR, and invariably doing that PR job is mediating."
He plans to tell another officer to check back later. "Most of the time, we're going from one call to the next, so we really don't have time to patrol. I tell people, `Call me every time the dog's loose.' The law of average's on my side - sooner or later, I'm going to catch that turkey."
He said owners frequently will keep their dogs inside for a few days after an officer talks to them, but then let them out again. If neighbors don't complain again, "we think the problem's been taken care of, and the complainant thinks we didn't do anything. So they need to keep calling us back."
For nearly a week, without regular food or water, the two dogs on Merriman Road faithfully waited for an owner who never returned. Then an animal control officer caught them and took them to their new, temporary home.
After spending seven days at the shelter as the county requires - in case the owner shows up - they were put up for adoption. They're still there, and will be kept around "as long as possible."
by CNB