While we’re all huddled at home, waiting out the virus, those of us with pets that live outside may take this opportunity to actually attend to their needs.
Dogs need regular food and water and a proper place to come in out of the weather. Most importantly, they need to be restrained in some way. The humane thing to do is have a dog house enclosed in some sort of dog run or a kennel area. Short of that a good collar that doesn’t choke attached to a stout chain is what is called for.
Cats also need a place to get out of the weather. They’re pretty tricky and can find their way into just about anything. Some food and water and they’ll be fine. Restrained is better but cats, well they’re cats. They’re going to do their own thing.
Multiplying cats is a continual problem in Rio Arriba County but they don’t present a danger to residents and their animals. Dogs do.
Rio Arriba County has one animal control officer. The city of Española has one too. We chose two random days of raw E-911 computer automated dispatch log and found an average of 13 calls per 24 hour period for these two officers. In most cases when a call comes in, the officer responsible for answering it is busy with another call.
The most common calls are loose dog(s) in the road, dogs chasing people, dogs chasing livestock, dogs attacking people and/or their pet, dogs killing livestock. The story on page A2 is in no way unique. Debbie Harrier was just so sick and tired of dog packs and losing foul to them, she came and spoke to William Coburn at the Rio Grande SUN. She’s not alone. Other neighbros in San Pedro lose foul, regularly.
Local author and Jemez Trustee Stanley Crawford was attacked last week in Dixon while walking his dog. He is not unique. People all over the County call about being attacked by dogs while walking or biking. Sometimes they’re attacked in their own yards.
Dogs are hit on the road daily. Local animal control officer AWHO Benevidas does his best to clear the carnage and chase loose dogs but he’s one man in a city of 10,000, with many bad animal owners.
Our mayor is quite familiar with the problem. He called 911 last week reporting a dog hit by a car right near the animal shelter. In non-COVID times we would perhaps call on Mayor Javier Sanchez to expend some capital and man-hours trying to rein in these folks who simply should not have pets. But limited contact and an inability to even enforce ordinance violations of a serious type, we can’t expect the city to address this serious issue. Not now at least.
And it is serious. About 10 a.m., Nov. 20 a Rio Arriba County deputy responded to a call in Alcalde and was attacked by two loose dogs. The County has not released the incident report, nor will give details, but radio chatter sounded like the deputy retreated as best he could but had to either shoot the dog or be attacked. He chose to shoot it, and probably was right to do so.
What if that wasn’t an armed deputy? What if that was little boy or girl walking home from their neighbor’s a few houses away?
The pandemic has seemingly made more bad pet owners worse and made those who were already negligent, more so. Finding your birds dead is terrible, but not comparable to a dead child.
We need to focus some resources on animal control and start holding people accountable. Until some people have their animals taken away, are fined and possibly forced to be educated, this problem will grow.