A morning with Warren’s Animal Control officers

By Brian C. Louwers
C & G Staff Writer

WARREN — For Warren Animal Control officers Tim Herig and Lisa Taylor, their jobs are about more than just reining in wayward cats and dogs.

They’re not trained police officers; they don’t carry guns, make arrests, or bolt through traffic from one corner of the city to the next in search of bad guys. 

As animal people — Herig has two of his own dogs, while Taylor keeps two dogs and three cats —and city employees, they said they enjoy doing what they can to help animals in need, and to help pet owners become responsible pet owners. 

“We have the power to help animals every day,” said Taylor, behind the wheel of her city-issued truck en route to assist Herig, her lone partner in covering Warren’s 34-plus square miles of pet-filled neighborhoods. “We have the power in this job to educate people.”

A morning spent on patrol with Herig and Taylor revealed that, seemingly, education is what their job is really about — that and the hopefully increased responsibility more educated pet owners would exhibit.

The officers said they typically spend about an hour on the phone to start their days. They log messages left overnight about dogs on the loose, neglected animals and owners looking for lost pets.  They make calls to officers in neighboring jurisdictions and to local shelters, looking to match animals with situations.

Armed with a game plan of sorts — a list of tasks for the day, the most pressing reported concerns to address — they hit the road at about 9:30 a.m. after first checking with Warren police dispatchers, who alert them to any immediate problems. Before they leave the station, they also check to see if any animals were brought in overnight by officers on patrol.

Of course, plans for the day made with the best of intentions get momentarily sidetracked when dispatch calls.

On this morning, Herig and Taylor were summoned to an area on Hoover, north of 11 Mile, to investigate reports of a pair of pit bulls running free.

Problems with pets usually begin as problems with owners
By the time Taylor arrived, Herig said he’d lost sight of the two pit bulls. The dogs were last seen running near an apartment complex on the west side of Hoover; the dogs dined on food near a Dumpster, then ran lost between homes and businesses and eventually disappeared, at least temporarily.

Getting back to the list of things to do, both trucks headed over to a home near 10 Mile and Mound to investigate a complaint about a neglected dog.

“Yesterday I had a call, no food or water, left chained outside,” Taylor said. “The overwhelming feeling is anger. I was here yesterday. I will check to see if there are any signs of them being home.”

Arriving at the house, the officers looked for signs of human life. While none were found  — the official form notice left the day before was still affixed to the door, and the mail had not been retrieved — the big white Pyrenees mountain dog remained outside, and appeared happy to see Taylor and Herig.

Again left with no sign of food and a frozen dish of water in temperatures ranging in the 20s, the dog was taken back to the station, warmed up, fed and held pending further investigation.

Herig said such actions are warranted in cases of neglect and abandonment, particularly in instances where potentially life-threatening conditions exist, such as freezing temperatures.

“Generally, we have to wait three or four days [if a dog is inside of a home],” Herig said. “If they’re outside, it’s a little bit easier.”

Nobody home except the pets
With the big fluffy white dog secured in the back of the truck, Taylor headed over to another home nearby, on Panama, to check on a report about two dogs, a parrot and a gerbil left unattended inside.

Pulling up at the address, it was obvious that nobody was home, except for the pets.

Taylor looked in windows and could see the dogs. The “parrot” turned out to be a ferret.  While there were some signs of possible food for the pets, animal excrement inside of the house led her to believe that something might be wrong. She said perhaps the owner had been hospitalized, or forced to leave. With incomplete information, she decided to leave the form notice on the door, and to check the address again the following day.

“I have to think about it for a while. We’ll probably post a note. Tomorrow, I have a feeling we’ll be breaking in here,” Taylor said, adding that the situation is likely much different than the one encountered earlier.

“This isn’t intentional neglect. That is,” Taylor said, “they left him in an intentional situation with no safety net for the dog.”

Back on the hunt for dogs on the loose
After posting the note at the home on Panama, Taylor again made contact with Herig, who was back on the track of the pit bulls running loose near 11 Mile, between Schoenherr and Hoover.

“They’re running lost. That’s bad because when we start chasing them, they’re not going to run home,” Taylor said. “They’re going to run away from us.

And that’s exactly what the dogs did.

Working as a team, Herig and Taylor followed the dogs in trucks through a neighborhood east of Schoenherr. When the dogs changed direction again and headed back west, they attempted to coral them in a corner of a parking lot at a medical complex. It took about half an hour, but the dogs were taken into custody after one first attempted to climb a fence and then became stuck in brush after attempting to go under it.

Taylor moved in quickly and secured the dog with a “safe stick,” essentially a firm pole with a looped wire “lasso” at the end.

She waited with the dog while Herig attempted to secure the second pit bull, which watched nearby and barked as its friend was captured.

“We’ll go after one. When there’s two, you have to worry about the other one,” said Herig, who eventually managed to secure the second dog after luring it closer with biscuits.

With no tags, the dogs were transported back to the station, where they would be kept until they were moved to the county’s animal shelter.

Herig said using proper identification tags with phone numbers are the one thing owners can do to make life easier for all parties involved.

In 2006, 573 dogs were brought in by Warren Animal Control. Herig said a little less than half of those were returned because the owners could not be identified. Countless others are euthanized in shelters for the same reasons every year.

Despite what he said some people allege, that is not the fault of animal control officers.

“It’s the owners. If we could properly ID them, they wouldn’t be in the shelter,” Herig said. “It’s owner irresponsibility. That’s causing the shelters to be so full.

“We need the public to be more responsible. We get dumped on … a lot.”

In addition to the dogs brought in by animal control, 379 were dropped off at the station by owners who chose to give them up in 2006.  Herig said owners also gave up 535 cats.

One final run for the morning
Before taking the dogs back to the kennels inside of the Warren police complex, Herig and Taylor made one last stop sent over through police dispatch.

Not far from where the pit bulls were captured near 11 Mile and Schoenherr, they arrived at a home to pick up a dog that reportedly died of an illness. It’s a service they don’t always provide — they usually ask pet owners to take their departed animals to a shelter for cremation — but they did so in this case because they were in the neighborhood.

“If they call, we ask them to be responsible,” Herig said. “If we take them to the shelter, it costs the city. If they do it themselves, it’s free.”

The deceased rottweiler was taken from the family’s home in a bed sheet and transported in the truck back to the station. Later in the day, either Herig or Taylor would take the remains to the county shelter, along with any live pets or other deceased animals, before the shelter closed at 4 p.m.

But before that, there was an afternoon full of dispatch calls to handle, and that list that would just grow longer the next morning.

Final notes about the morning with Animal Control
The next day, Taylor reported that she had made contact with the owner of the Pyrenees mountain dog taken from the home near 10 Mile and Mound. The final status of the dog remained undetermined at press time.

Herig said a person claming to be the caretaker of the animals inside of the home on Panama had contacted Warren Animal Control after discovering the note left at the home by Taylor.

The owners of the pit bulls captured by Warren Animal Control near 11 Mile and Schoenherr had inquired about their pets, and were notified of their location at the Macomb shelter.