Kelli Jelen tried to coax Hank, a German shepherd, from Richard Peconi’s backyard. The dog was shy, having spent much of his life in the yard.
Peconi adopted the dog when Hank was left on his doorstep with a bag of dog food. However, Peconi now has health problems and can no longer care for the dog. So he called in Jelen, a Lakewood animal control officer.
“He gets in my way and trips me,” Peconi said. “He almost broke my arm yesterday. I can’t trust him anymore than you can an alligator.”
Jelen eventually wrestled Hank into her truck, as Peconi yelled at some hecklers from a youth detention facility across the street. Hank was taken to the Table Mountain Animal Center.
No longer mere dogcatchers, animal control officers have a complicated set of duties and expectations. They offer help, education, training and wildlife mitigation — all in one shift sometimes. The job also is expected to become more complex this year if a new countywide vicious dog ordinance passes (see related story, Page 4).
After helping Peconi with his canine conundrum, Jelen and a colleague responded to a call later in the shift about a deer that had lingered in a front yard near Green Mountain for two days.
Jelen suspected chronic wasting disease and called Jerrie McKee of the Colorado Division of Wildlife to put down the animal.
“This is the part I always hate,” Jelen said, wincing as McKee shot .22 slugs into the deer’s head.
McKee said the method is “actually very humane.”
Arvada animal control officer Susan Harris said she changed professions after noticing a lack of education among pet owners as a veterinary technician.
“I saw a lot of abuse and neglect come through the door,” Harris said. “I decided I wanted to get more hands-on in educating the public, so I started doing this.”
She said much of her job is as simple as teaching dog owners to provide a roof over the pup’s head.
“A lot of people don’t understand that an animal needs to be provided for in a way that it would provide for itself naturally,” she said. “For instance, if it’s raining, in the wild that animal would seek shelter. A dog in a backyard needs to have the option of seeking shelter in a rain storm.”
Harris also encourages barking dogs’ owners to invest in special collars and training.
“Oftentimes we’ve had cases where this kind of behavior has caused children to be so fearful that when the dog goes up against the fence, children have been sent out into traffic,” she said. “That can be dangerous.”
Harris and Jelen each said there is no typical day for an animal control officer. Although there are the constants of barking dog complaints and animals-at-large, even a seemingly mundane call can yield surprises.
Such was the case weeks earlier when Jelen found a woman breeding pit bulls in her home. She told the woman, Mary Nowling, to get rid of most of her 22 pit bulls.
Today, Jelen follows up to see if Nowling has complied. She has, but added she may move to another state to continue her career as a pit bull breeder.
“This is a hostile environment for these dogs,” Nowling said of Colorado. “I’d love to find another place, maybe go down south.”
Although most of Jelen’s and Harris’ contacts are friendly, they encounter some hostility, largely based on negative stereotypes.
“The hardest thing about our job is the adversity,” Harris said. “We’re trying to make a positive impression and show that we’re not just here to take someone’s dog and kill it. We’re here to improve the relationship between people and their pets. It’s very hard for us to come across as the good guys.”
In the meantime, Harris said she is soldiering on in her attempt to increase pet responsibility. She’s a firm advocate of spaying and neutering and said one of her favorite job perks is visiting schools to educate the children about animal control issues.
“We do everything we can on our level to direct and educate for the greater good,” she said. “We try to make a dent, but we can only do so much. It’s still raining cats and dogs out there.”