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Show It 's a dirty job story ends. But unfortunately unfortunate-ly there is that one in twent) exception, the exception that populates the world with problem dogs. Rover triples in size in two weeks and suddenly Sally is being eaten out of house and home, or gets kicked out. Rover is left in the care of a friend while Sally finds new living quarters, or another job. The friend loses interest, inter-est, or moves, or forgets where he left Rover and inevitably ther is a problem. Six weeks later, Sally comes to retrieve Rover and Rover is gone! Sally goes into histerics. Sally calls dispatch in Coalville. "I know my dog is in the pound! I know that man has killed it!" Sometimes that is the case, most often it is not. Sally calls back an hour, or a day, or a week later. "I found my dog." When Sally finds Rover he has had possibly as many as six different homes. He is confused and insecure. She never can get him to stay at her new home. He's always going 'back' to somewhere or other, looking for something some-thing or other. But, whether Sally finds Rover or not, whether he is dead, or in the pound, or not, seems to consistantly elude her, is that (she) is responsible respons-ible for the problem. "So, what's the problem?" prob-lem?" Some might ask. Well the problem is, sooner or later transient Rover's transient owners might get tired of him and turn him out permanately. Or maybe they'll all move to vail, or Sun Valley. What's a dog to do? Well find other dogs or course. Or knock over garbage cans every night, or sneak someones lunch off a picnic table, or kill the geese on the golf coarse, or go a short ways up into the hills around town and find a . sheep. Somebody's got to try and save the animals from the dogs! Wild animals have a sporting chance. But animals that have been domesticated domesticat-ed like the geese on the golf coarse are just so many sitting ducks! (pardon the pun) And, sheep really aren't to bright, (which is probably why they are so frequently likened to humans in biblical writings) So, something needs to be done. The county passes an ordinance. The ordinance requires enforcement. Enter Barry Schoda, Summit Sum-mit County's Animal Control Officer. A good way to acquire insight into this dilemma, is to spend an afternoon with Barry. For example, a stray dog is seen at the Park. "Does this dog belong to any one here?" Barry inquires. Suddenly the dog has a dozen owners. After Barry leaves, someone will take the dog home and start advertizing for the owner. After several days, or weeks, of advertising, the dog will be returned to the park, or in some cases, the "dog catcher" will be called to come get it. "Often a resident will find a dog with a tag and call dispatch requesting the identification iden-tification of the owner. (Dispatch can't give but this information.) For some reason, they would rather go the expense and trouble of trying to find the owner themselves. Very often, they never do and end up calling us to come get the dog." Barry said. Barry got a call from dispatch. It seems a lady in but someone has to do it The phones start jumping at Dispatch with people calling in descriptions of their 'missing 'miss-ing dogs. ,4I suppose when people see me drive up the street, they run to see where their dog is. If they can't find the animal, I think the rational is "if he picks up Rover and I have reported him missing, somehow I will not be perceived as having let him run lose." Barry doens't pick up dogs becaus he gets his jollies out of abusing dogs and dog owners. Nor does he, abuse dogs or dog owners. He picks up dogs because they are untagged, un-tagged, unleashed, uncared for, sick, suspected of biting; because he received, complaints, com-plaints, because the law requires re-quires it. And because in a great many cases,, it is the humane thing to do. In most cases, Barry will try to find the owner rather than impound the animal. When he does, he usually issues a citation; either because the dog was running lose, or is improperly licensed licens-ed or tagged. The intent is that hopefully the owner, not wanting another citation, will take care of the dog according to Xi" " '""' " :::: holid; . ::( $1 Park City wa being attacked by a dog, in her own garage. The dog left when Barry arrived. ar-rived. She knew who the dog belonged to, where the dog lived, but she did not want the dog picked up. The womans husband arrived ar-rived on the scene. "Who called him?" He angrilly demanded. The woman explained ex-plained she had been attacked attack-ed when she tried to chase the dog out of her garage. To which the husband replied, he had experienced the same problem, but neither one would sign a complaint, or tell Barry where he could find the dog. This was one of many cases where a family in one of the Park City subdivisions had made arrangements with someone to care for and feed their 'Watch dog' during the frequent and long periods of time when they were away from their home. But the care was not consistant, or dependable and the dog had become a neighborhood problem. pro-blem. A problem that nobody wanted to take responsibility for. Barry had been called to scare the dog away, but no way would the victims cooperate with him to restrain the dog and prevent pre-vent possible future incidents, in-cidents, while an effort was made to contact the owner. A call came in that there were two German Shephards on the Golf Course killing Geese. "I've had complaints on these two before." Barry said. But, this time it was different. dif-ferent. Before, the calls had come from people who claimed they didn't know who the dogs belonged to and the dogs had always managed to elude Barry. This time, the call came from a woman who had been hired to care for them. "I don't know what to do." she exclaimed. "They won't eat their food and they keep breaking out of their run. Everyday, I have to go find them and put them back, but today, they turned on me." She was obviously frightened and shaken. Her youngest brother was just angry. Angry with her for calling Barry. And angry with Barry for being the 'dog catcher.' Barry managed to catch each of the snarling, snapping snapp-ing animals and returned them to their run. He then helped the woman temporarily tem-porarily repair it. So they wouldn't get out for a while. She said she had no intention inten-tion of going back in there and gave Barry the information informa-tion he needed to locate the owners. The animals paced the run, back and forth, their tails between their legs; turning occassionally , growling and lunging towards us. The results of being left alone and fed by a stranger and never having been shown affection, ortaken for a run, they can become agressive, mean and dangerous. In this case, the dogs took their frustration out on the hopeless geese. An interesting phenomenom that always occurs oc-curs when Barry's truck ap-pears ap-pears in the Park City area. |