If you own pets, you know that their care is a 24 hour, seven day a week job. Now multiply that by thousands of animals a year of every type and variety. Now that’s a job.
April 9 to 15 is National Animal Care & Control Appreciation Week, and it’s a moment to look at all the work done by employees at San Diego County Animal Services.
Animal care and medical teams at the County’s three animal shelters feed, walk, bed down, groom and medically treat dogs, cats, rabbits, any variety of livestock, snakes, turtles, fish, chickens, birds and more. Then there’s dog licensing, microchipping for dogs, cats and rabbits, spaying and neutering, reunions between lost animals and their owners, and customer service representatives finalizing pet adoptions.
Out in the field, animal control officers do much more than round up stray dogs. Animal control officers can make arrests, serve warrants, and investigate and enforce animal law violations ranging from infractions to felonies.
They evacuate animals from emergency situations like wildfires. They bring in horses, pigs, goats and other livestock to the County shelters in cases of neglect. They remove rattlesnakes that show up in people’s yards or on their doorsteps. Or once a boa that found its way into an office restroom.
They rescue a wide variety of animals from just about every possible predicament you can imagine: ducklings down a grate, a dog trapped in a storm drain, a puppy from being swept out to sea or an opossum caught on a fence, to name a few.
Shelter staff also keeps up to date on the latest in animal care.
Employees do take time out to have a little fun, too. For an adoption promotion, they made their own version of the Mannequin Challenge.
