This shows how much I haven't been keeping up with things! I had typed this last August and never posted it till today.
There are many, many, jobs people have, that, like a career in animal control, are thankless and seldom considered a "good" job to have. I feel Animal Control is a job, depending where you live and work of course, that can be a really great and secure job that can fly 'under the radar' of many jobs were a profession like a Firefighter or Policeman (or woman) could seldom do.
The lyrics below are from a late 1970's Alan Parson's Project album titled "Turn of a Friendly Card".
Alan Parson's albums usually have 'themes' and the theme of this album was actually about gambling.
But this short song and it's lyrics, to me anyway, represent very well what much of working for San Bernardino County Animal Control could be like, the public or the supervisors could be the "scornful thoughts that fly your way", with the "you gave the best you had to give" being how many if not most of the employees felt like 'back in the day'.
Here's the lyrics;
Nothing's good the news is bad
The heat goes on and it drives you mad,
Scornful thoughts that fly your way,
You should turn away, cause there's nothing more to say,
You've got nothing left to lose, you've got nothing left to lose,
No you've got nothing left to lose, who'd wanna be standing in your shoes
You gave the best you had to give,
You only had one life to live,
You fought so hard you were a slave,
After all you gave there was nothing left to save,
You've got nothing left to lose, you've got nothing left to lose,
No you've got nothing left to lose, who'd wanna be standing in your shoes
Nothing ventured, nothing gained,
No more lingering doubt remained,
Nothing sacred or profane, Everything to gain, cause you've got nothing left......
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Just Whose Jurisdiction Is This Anyway?
So again it has been a while since posting my thoughts and memories of my career in Animal Control.
So many things happened in a day and all those days! Almost 25 years worth, how to remember it all?
The one thing that lately has been reminding me most of that job? The TV show Southland.
I remember posting about the show when it first started, in that very first episode, the newbie had a dead person locked in a house with a aggressive dog and how they handled it by calling out the area ACO to get the dog out first.
Now, a whole lot more happens on that show than I or anyone else in our department had to deal with, but some of the scenes in this new season of the show are situations that I, as well as many in the department, did deal with!
In recent episodes there were segments like this one, the police cruzer comes across a crazy naked guy jogging/ running in the street, they tell him to run a direction and then continue on commenting about how he's another areas jurisdiction now, so they're done. Of cousre we didn't do that with people, but with dogs we did!
The backstory to this is that many of our areas came to boundaries of other area cities, like an unincorporated area we'd be in would butt up against the City limits of San Bernardino, or the City of Rialto, or the City of Fontana, or even Riverside County is some sections. So I, or we, would be out chasing a dog or dogs that were actually still there when we'd finally get to the call.
This scenario was most often in the spring and fall when the female dogs were in heat and packs of male dogs were around for that. But this type of call could also be any time of the year if a dog had taken up residency in a neighborhood (don't feed the strays!!!).
Many dogs would look at you and run away, until it was near it's own house. Then the dog would often stand there and start barking at you or the truck you're in. That's a different situation though, I'm talking about the dog or dogs that would just run around and around in an area. Never stopping at any house or place just running to get away. I or we would chase it around trying to get the dog to go into any yard or go into an area where we could corner and catch it. Many did just that, many did not though and some of those would take off and run anywhere. So if we'd spent a lot of time chasing it and it was apprent we weren't going to catch it, and we could 'steer it' towards a nearby cities boundary limits, that's what we'd do! Sometimes we'd call dispatch and let them know to call that cities Animal Control before leaving the area, sometimes not and just indicate "UTC" or 'Unable to Catch' on our Daily Report Form for that call. Then it was drive on to the next call and hope we wouldn't get called back for this one!
Another segment was a bit greusome. In the show the police respond to a call to meet up with the Railroad Police because a person had been hit and disected by a train and was litterally, all over the place, around the tracks. So whose call was it going to be? The railroad cops didn't want it and the police didn't either. What part was "more of him" on?
Well, in the show the female officer is aruging over her cell phone with another govermental agency about a different problem and in hearing her getting pissed and arguing with the agency the railroad police relent and take the responsibility for the cleanup.
So imagine the same or a similar situation with dogs or cats. There were several areas with tracks running through them. Sometimes dogs would be in the wrong place wrong time and get clobbered by the fast running Metro Link trains. Those trains flew through areas and sometimes due to the speed, dogs got hit. Especially since many areas of the tracks were blocked off by block walls to help with noise and prevent free access for safety. But animals would get in there and when scared by the vibration and noise they'd run and run back into the trains.
Sometimes though, area kids would find a dead animal, usually killed by a car in the street, and they'd take and put the animal on the tracks, just to see what happens I guess, and let a train hit it.
We'd get the call and pick up the pieces we could get. The worst time was when this call happened for us in the hot summer. Those days it didn't take long at all for the entire mess to smell really, really bad.
A similar situation would be a call in an area that was so close to that invisible boundary that it could be our call or not. These calls were the most annoying if was almost "quittin' time" or at night when on call. If there was a 'R-P', Reporting Party, the thing to do was call and try to get more information before heading out. As I have posted before though we couldn't usually be certain that the On-Call Duty Officer had actually done anything more than tell the Answering service to "send the area officer" even though they were supposed to check the information of the call.
Quite often though, and I expect it's all worse now since many more people have cell phones then back then, the person calling was just "driving by" and saw the animal get hit and didn't know after that or saw it run off and didn't know where it went. So, what would you do?
Yeah the money was good enough to just take a drive to see if you could find it. And sometimes you actually could find the injured animal, usually a dog by the way. Cats were almost never still alive after getting hit. But you couldn't be sure, do you really want to go?
Sometimes you could, and I did if it was a 'sketchy' call, wait and see if any other calls came in about it. Then go if they did and worry about it if they didn't! But would you want to be the gambler?
Even when I was a supervisor with this kind of call I often would hold off to see if anyone else called in about it before sending someone.
And if the call was close by? No reason NOT to go. Then you'd be looking at a 'triple time call' especially if you could be there and back in less than an hour. No, I'm talking about the calls where you'd be looking at forty-five minutes to an hour or more just to get there! But then you're a gambler again because if the animal was still alive and not too bad off then it was a trip to the 24 hour vet clinic and then shelter afterword. More money? yes, but more hours of no sleep too!
But, you get out there and it's too late. Animal didn't make it, often the outcome. And you find that it is on the wrong side of the street, or on the wrong corner of the intersection, one area had three of the four corners of an intersection in the City of Fontana, only one was County. Or the animal is in the gutter when the County starts on the grass. What then?
First I'll say right off the top, if I had gone all the way out to the call I'd just pick it up. It didn't matter to me, I'm already there! Just throw it in the dead box in the back and go home and impound it the next day at the shelter. I know of many ACO's though that chose not to pick it up because it wasn't in 'our' area, only to get the call again later because someone would drive by and see fur "move", from the wind usually, and swear the animal was still alive lying there in pain. Then they'd have to drive back out and pick it up anyway!
I never did this, but I did hear bragging about it over the years, an ACO actually dragging the animal to the city area just so they wouldn't have to pick it up. As I said above, if I was there, to me there was no reason not to pick it up!
Actually, that August night that Princess Diana was killed I was out on a call, "HBC", Hit By Car, "dog alive across from Serrano High School in Phelan". Came in about 2 AM. This was before XM Satellite radio so I often listened to 'skip' AM stations when out on call at night. I listened to KSL from Salt Lake City as they were live from London talking about the accident and that she had been killed. As this was close to where I lived I was there in less than a half hour but the dog was dead too, a very large dog that had not been dead too long but had been hit too hard to make it. I put it in the truck and went home. As I wasn't working the next day, I had another area ACO come by and pick it up and take it to the shelter.
Till next time
So many things happened in a day and all those days! Almost 25 years worth, how to remember it all?
The one thing that lately has been reminding me most of that job? The TV show Southland.
I remember posting about the show when it first started, in that very first episode, the newbie had a dead person locked in a house with a aggressive dog and how they handled it by calling out the area ACO to get the dog out first.
Now, a whole lot more happens on that show than I or anyone else in our department had to deal with, but some of the scenes in this new season of the show are situations that I, as well as many in the department, did deal with!
In recent episodes there were segments like this one, the police cruzer comes across a crazy naked guy jogging/ running in the street, they tell him to run a direction and then continue on commenting about how he's another areas jurisdiction now, so they're done. Of cousre we didn't do that with people, but with dogs we did!
The backstory to this is that many of our areas came to boundaries of other area cities, like an unincorporated area we'd be in would butt up against the City limits of San Bernardino, or the City of Rialto, or the City of Fontana, or even Riverside County is some sections. So I, or we, would be out chasing a dog or dogs that were actually still there when we'd finally get to the call.
This scenario was most often in the spring and fall when the female dogs were in heat and packs of male dogs were around for that. But this type of call could also be any time of the year if a dog had taken up residency in a neighborhood (don't feed the strays!!!).
Many dogs would look at you and run away, until it was near it's own house. Then the dog would often stand there and start barking at you or the truck you're in. That's a different situation though, I'm talking about the dog or dogs that would just run around and around in an area. Never stopping at any house or place just running to get away. I or we would chase it around trying to get the dog to go into any yard or go into an area where we could corner and catch it. Many did just that, many did not though and some of those would take off and run anywhere. So if we'd spent a lot of time chasing it and it was apprent we weren't going to catch it, and we could 'steer it' towards a nearby cities boundary limits, that's what we'd do! Sometimes we'd call dispatch and let them know to call that cities Animal Control before leaving the area, sometimes not and just indicate "UTC" or 'Unable to Catch' on our Daily Report Form for that call. Then it was drive on to the next call and hope we wouldn't get called back for this one!
Another segment was a bit greusome. In the show the police respond to a call to meet up with the Railroad Police because a person had been hit and disected by a train and was litterally, all over the place, around the tracks. So whose call was it going to be? The railroad cops didn't want it and the police didn't either. What part was "more of him" on?
Well, in the show the female officer is aruging over her cell phone with another govermental agency about a different problem and in hearing her getting pissed and arguing with the agency the railroad police relent and take the responsibility for the cleanup.
So imagine the same or a similar situation with dogs or cats. There were several areas with tracks running through them. Sometimes dogs would be in the wrong place wrong time and get clobbered by the fast running Metro Link trains. Those trains flew through areas and sometimes due to the speed, dogs got hit. Especially since many areas of the tracks were blocked off by block walls to help with noise and prevent free access for safety. But animals would get in there and when scared by the vibration and noise they'd run and run back into the trains.
Sometimes though, area kids would find a dead animal, usually killed by a car in the street, and they'd take and put the animal on the tracks, just to see what happens I guess, and let a train hit it.
We'd get the call and pick up the pieces we could get. The worst time was when this call happened for us in the hot summer. Those days it didn't take long at all for the entire mess to smell really, really bad.
A similar situation would be a call in an area that was so close to that invisible boundary that it could be our call or not. These calls were the most annoying if was almost "quittin' time" or at night when on call. If there was a 'R-P', Reporting Party, the thing to do was call and try to get more information before heading out. As I have posted before though we couldn't usually be certain that the On-Call Duty Officer had actually done anything more than tell the Answering service to "send the area officer" even though they were supposed to check the information of the call.
Quite often though, and I expect it's all worse now since many more people have cell phones then back then, the person calling was just "driving by" and saw the animal get hit and didn't know after that or saw it run off and didn't know where it went. So, what would you do?
Yeah the money was good enough to just take a drive to see if you could find it. And sometimes you actually could find the injured animal, usually a dog by the way. Cats were almost never still alive after getting hit. But you couldn't be sure, do you really want to go?
Sometimes you could, and I did if it was a 'sketchy' call, wait and see if any other calls came in about it. Then go if they did and worry about it if they didn't! But would you want to be the gambler?
Even when I was a supervisor with this kind of call I often would hold off to see if anyone else called in about it before sending someone.
And if the call was close by? No reason NOT to go. Then you'd be looking at a 'triple time call' especially if you could be there and back in less than an hour. No, I'm talking about the calls where you'd be looking at forty-five minutes to an hour or more just to get there! But then you're a gambler again because if the animal was still alive and not too bad off then it was a trip to the 24 hour vet clinic and then shelter afterword. More money? yes, but more hours of no sleep too!
But, you get out there and it's too late. Animal didn't make it, often the outcome. And you find that it is on the wrong side of the street, or on the wrong corner of the intersection, one area had three of the four corners of an intersection in the City of Fontana, only one was County. Or the animal is in the gutter when the County starts on the grass. What then?
First I'll say right off the top, if I had gone all the way out to the call I'd just pick it up. It didn't matter to me, I'm already there! Just throw it in the dead box in the back and go home and impound it the next day at the shelter. I know of many ACO's though that chose not to pick it up because it wasn't in 'our' area, only to get the call again later because someone would drive by and see fur "move", from the wind usually, and swear the animal was still alive lying there in pain. Then they'd have to drive back out and pick it up anyway!
I never did this, but I did hear bragging about it over the years, an ACO actually dragging the animal to the city area just so they wouldn't have to pick it up. As I said above, if I was there, to me there was no reason not to pick it up!
Actually, that August night that Princess Diana was killed I was out on a call, "HBC", Hit By Car, "dog alive across from Serrano High School in Phelan". Came in about 2 AM. This was before XM Satellite radio so I often listened to 'skip' AM stations when out on call at night. I listened to KSL from Salt Lake City as they were live from London talking about the accident and that she had been killed. As this was close to where I lived I was there in less than a half hour but the dog was dead too, a very large dog that had not been dead too long but had been hit too hard to make it. I put it in the truck and went home. As I wasn't working the next day, I had another area ACO come by and pick it up and take it to the shelter.
Till next time
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