
DATE: Sunday, April 27, 1997                TAG: 9704270050

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY JEFF HAMPTON, CORRESPONDENT 

DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY                    LENGTH:  115 lines

POOR PAY, PERIL, AWFUL HOURS - ANIMAL CONTROL IS ONE RUFF JOB VICIOUS ANIMALS AND ANGRY NEIGHBORS ARE ALL IN THE LINE OF DUTY.

Pasquotank County Animal Control Officer Ronnie Barefoot responded to a repeat complaint of a barking dog recently and got an earful - but not from the dog.

``He's the barkingest dog in the world,'' said a stone-faced neighbor who approached Barefoot as the officer assessed the situation. ``Something's got to be done about that dog,'' she said. ``He'll bark until you want to throw up. I wish y'all would do something. I can't take it anymore.''

``Yes, ma'am,'' said Barefoot, looking down at the woman from his 6-foot-4 perspective.

It was a typical chewing-out for the two full-time and three part-time animal control officers of Pasquotank County, known collectively as ``the dogcatcher.'' It is a thankless job that pays about $15,000 a year, although Barefoot has a better-paying, full-time job and does this only on the side.

Neither people nor animals show much respect to dogcatchers, say the officers.

``Animal control officers in Pasquotank County are badly abused by the general public,'' said Barefoot.

The training comes on the job, and equipment is minimal. The officers have a dog box in the back of the department pickup truck, a .410-gauge shotgun, a pole with a loop of rope on the end, wire animal traps and a tranquilizer gun. Barefoot is the only animal control officer certified to use pepper spray. The work uniform is a pair of brown coveralls with a sheriff's department logo on the sleeve and the officer's name on the chest. None of them is a sworn deputy.

Barefoot was in uniform on the day he responded to the loud dog. He had to appear in court later.

But first the case of the barking boxer had to be solved.

The little boxer had broken his chain but was inside a short, bent wire fence that surrounded the small, muddy back yard. The dog was clean and friendly, wagging his nub at the tail end and snorting with delight at the front end. He had a rabies tag and a county tag. The dog's owner was not home, but some neighbors, perhaps the expressionless, exasperated woman, had had enough of his barking and called the sheriff.

The dog did not bark at all while Barefoot was there.

``He shut up because you're standing there,'' said the neighbor as she entered the back door of the house adjacent to the boxer's home. The homes are 15 feet apart, on Dyer Street. ``He's been barking 90 miles an hour since 8 o'clock this morning.''

Barefoot found a pad of paper, wrote a warning note for the owner of the barking boxer and put it on the front door.

``This here is an ongoing problem for this house,'' said Barefoot, a large, friendly man who takes his job seriously. He planned to go the extra mile with the case and find the dog's owner at work.

At least he didn't have to take the dog to the shelter. During the month of March, the shelter received 116 stray dogs - and that was a low number, said Charlene Henard, supervisor of the Pasquotank County animal shelter. Animal control officers bring in most of them. Of the 20-plus animal control calls a day, more than half involve dogs.

``There are a lot of dogs in Pasquotank County,'' Henard said. ``Everybody has a dog.''

Barefoot and Henard say much of the problem comes from irresponsible dog owners. Many do not have their dogs spayed or neutered. Some just turn their dogs loose when they don't want them anymore. Some even ask animal control officers to haul off dogs because they don't want them anymore.

``That happens several times a day,'' Barefoot said as he drove his pickup in search of the boxer's owner. ``We don't mind doing for the elderly or handicapped. But somebody that can do for themselves, that's different.''

The dogs and other animals are not usually nice, either.

Barefoot once picked up an angry chow and the dog clamped down on his forearm. He still has the scar from a puncture wound of a single long tooth. A deputy took the bleeding officer to the hospital. Meanwhile, the dog escaped, and it took two more days to find it.

Another chow avoided officers for months. Barefoot almost caught him once after chasing him for several blocks.

``He even outsmarted the dog trap,'' said Barefoot. ``He'd take the bait out and eat it.'' The dog trap is a 5-foot-long wire cage with a trip latch on the door.

They never caught the chow. ``We haven't had any calls on him in a long time,'' said Barefoot.

The head animal control officer is out of work right now after slipping on ice trying to catch a horse. It had escaped from its pen on Northside Road.

Not long ago, Barefoot, a deputy and a couple of police officers caught a stray Canada goose waddling in the center of Hughes Boulevard in the middle of the night. They returned the goose to a local pond where other Canada geese live.

These guys get calls for cats up in trees and snakes under houses. They've captured homeless ferrets and pesky raccoons. It's their nasty job to pick up dead animals on local roads.

When everybody else is staying away from a vicious dog, the dogcatcher must face it down like a lawman of the Old West.

``They probably answer more calls per officer than our regular deputies,'' said Sheriff Randy Cartwright.

In his search for the owner of the boxer, Barefoot visited the real estate agency that rented the property. He found out that young women lived there, and where they worked. He tracked one down at a nearby music store.

The woman told him that she and her roommate planned to move in a couple of weeks because they had been harassed so much about the dog. They would take their dog with them. Another cased solved.

Onto the next problem. The latch on the dog box was broken. Every time Barefoot stopped the truck, the dog box door banged.

``That's going to drive me crazy,'' said Barefoot.

It's a dogcatcher's life. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by JEFF HAMPTON

Ronnie Barefoot, a Pasquotank County animal control officer, checks

out a complaint about a barking boxer on Dyer Street in Elizabeth

City.

Graphic

THE COSTS

The animal shelter will hold dogs for six days before putting

them up for adoption. To reclaim a dog, the fee is $5 for the first

day and $3 for every day after that.

The law requires dog owners buy a $10 lifetime county tag, and