During the three-year period from 2019-2021, animal control officers in Ector County and the City of Odessa investigated more than 1,800 animal bite calls and 2,800 calls involving “aggressive” or “vicious” dogs.
While not all of the calls turned out to be legitimate, officials say the numbers are too high and pet owners can help bring them down.
Too many pet owners are allowing their animals to roam free, haven’t spayed or neutered their pets and are dumping unwanted cats and dogs in pastures, said Luz Barreraz and Bill Carpenter.
Barreraz, who has been with the county since 2013, said she recently came across a litter of puppies that had been dumped alongside a lease road that were starving and sick with Parvo, a contagious and highly deadly virus.
She speculates some people abandon animals because they know the Odessa Animal Shelter is often at maximum capacity and they suspect the county will immediately euthanize them.
“What takes the majority of our time is stray animals. The only way we could address that issue is owners fixing their animals, keeping them contained so that they’re not procreating and just stopping the dumping,” she said. “People think they’re doing the right thing because they’re not being euthanized. But at the end of the day, what quality of life do they have when they’re struggling to survive out in the pasture? Or they get a disease or they slowly die of hunger?”
In many cases, the animals become feral and, in the case of dogs, they develop a pack mentality and become territorial, she said.
Carpenter has been field operations supervisor for Odessa Animal Control more than nine years. His officers receives frequent calls about stray dogs who have frightened people with aggressive behavior.
“The thing is, they’re scavenging. They’re having to find their own food. You have people throwing rocks at them. You have kids trying to hit them with sticks. These dogs will start to develop that mentality of ‘I need to protect myself,’” Carpenter said.
Bite calls
Many of the bite calls in the county are the result of people trying to do the right thing, Barreraz said.
“Usually when it’s a stray animal, it’s someone who initiated the contact. They were trying to rescue the dog or pet this stray dog and then they got bitten in the process,” she said. “Sometimes there’s a stray dog was in their yard and they try to pick it up.”
They’ve also handled plenty of calls from owners bitten by their own pets, Barreraz and Carpenter said.
Sometimes, a mama dog is being protective of her pups and other times, owners get bitten when trying to break up a fight between their dogs, she said.
State law dictates any animal that bites someone must be quarantined for 10 days to ensure they don’t have rabies, regardless of their vaccination status.
However, the county doesn’t have it’s own animal shelter so it has a contract with the City of Odessa’s shelter.
Right now, though, things are particularly bad because the city currently isn’t taking in county animals as it wraps up construction on its new, larger shelter on 42nd Street, Barreraz said.
It also isn’t quarantining animals that have bitten someone. The county recently had to get special permission from the state for a temporary quarantine facility on Sycamore Drive.
If the county can’t find the owners of a dog that has bitten someone by the end of the quarantine period, they’re euthanized, Barreraz said.
Odessa residents typically have three options when their dogs bite someone, Carpenter said. They can pay to have the dog or dogs quarantined at the shelter, ask if they can quarantine the dog or dogs at home or pay to have them quarantined at a veterinarian’s office.
Because of the ongoing construction, they only have the two latter options, Carpenter said.
Many times home quarantines are approved, but if someone has eight kids, three dogs and a two-bedroom house, it would be too difficult to keep everyone separated, he said.
Unfortunately, Carpenter said there are times when people don’t know which of their pets bit them.
“Well, guess what? All of them are going into quarantine because it goes back to the health and safety of the public,” Carpenter said. ” It’s gonna be pricey, but I think paying $400 or $500 or whatever it may be to have both in quarantine and observed is a small price to pay for a life.”
Quarantining at a vet’s office can cost up to $50 a day, he said.
“Do I feel bad about that? No, I don’t. If my dog bit somebody, I have two basset hounds, and if one of them bit somebody I’m going to quarantine them and I will pay it because that’s responsible pet ownership,” Carpenter said. “Here lately people are yelling and screaming and arguing ‘Just take the dog.’ It doesn’t work that way.”
If people want to surrender their dog, Carpenter said they’re free to do so after they pay for the 10 days of quarantine.
If they can’t quarantine the dog, or they don’t want to, the fines are up to $2,000 a day, he said.
Luckily, this area hasn’t had a case of rabies in a dog, cat or ferret for more than 40 years, Carpenter said.
Strays
With the city shelter’s limited space, the city has to be particular about the animals it accepts, Barreraz said. The animals have to be adoptable, so they can’t be aggressive or sick.
And sometimes, even if the dog isn’t aggressive or sick, the city won’t accept a new animal, simply because they don’t have the space, she said.
When county animal control officers get calls about stray dogs, they try to find the owners. If unsuccessful, they either leave the dog or they see if Crane’s animal control will take it in for 24 hours to see if the owners will claim it.
If the dog isn’t claimed, Ector County will take it back and euthanize it, Barreraz said.
“We exhaust all means to find the owners, so that means knocking on doors, asking witnesses do you guys know whose dog this is? Have you ever seen this dog? Which area does it come from? Where does it usually lay down to sleep? Because that’s going to show us where its comfort zone is, where it probably lives,” she said.
“When we feel like it’s not a threat we have to leave it there. Because I don’t want to end up having to euthanize somebody’s pet,” she said. “There is no leash law in the county so just because it’s loose doesn’t mean that it’s breaking the law. I mean, in the county they’re they’re free to roam as long as they’re vaccinated.”
If animal control officers get a call about an aggressive dog and they can’t find the owners, they’ll be put down, even if they haven’t bitten anyone, Barreraz said.
“It’s a liability if it’s aggressive. We can’t reach out to the rescue groups. We can’t reach out to the Humane Society because it’s aggressive,” she said.
Barreraz estimated 50% of the stray dogs they encounter actually have owners and are allowed to roam free. Sometimes the owners will make efforts to secure the dogs when contacted, but half the time officers wind up getting called about the dogs again, she said.
Carpenter said in the city, where leash laws exist, owners will be cited for maintaining a vicious animal if it leaves the yard and aggressively goes after someone, even if it doesn’t bite them. They’ll also be cited if the animals aren’t up-to-date on their vaccinations.
He gets a lot of calls from people who call repeatedly about the same dogs roaming free, but sometimes his officers’ hands are tied because when they arrive, the dog’s back in his own yard.
“They’ll say ‘Well, aren’t you gonna site them?’ No, I didn’t see it at large,” Carpenter said. “People have to understand that there is like some cop pulling you over and saying ‘I know sometime within the last six months you’ve sped so I’m gonna give you a ticket.’”
County animal control officers get calls nearly everyday about stray dogs killing chickens, but there’s not too much they can do about it given the lack of leash laws, she said.
“People forget that dogs are carnivores…so if you’ve got loose dogs, you got loose chickens, there’s going to be a problem,” Barreraz said. “You also have negligent livestock owners with pens that are pretty weak. Their animals are getting attacked, but they’re not upgrading their fencing. We’ll address pick up one dog and the next week it’s another dog.”
Barreraz and Carpenter said they’d love it if more people would microchip their animals so they could be found and when it comes to horses, goats and other livestock, she’d love to see people put up signs stating the number of horses, etc. they have.
“We go out on loose horses all the time, loose horses, loose goats, and we just have to look for signs of livestock ownership,” she said. “If there was a sign that said two horses that would be great because a lot of times those calls come in in the middle of night and deputies respond and I know it can be frustrating. They have other things they have to go out on.”
Not all aggressive
Many of their aggressive animal calls stem from a lack of understand about animal behavior, Carpenter and Barreraz said
“Aggressive is really a term that depends on perspective,” Barreraz said. “We’ll ask what did the dog do that was aggressive and they’ll say ‘It barked at me.’ Well, that’s how a dog communicates, you know?”
Carpenter agreed and said he thinks animal control officers will determine that an “aggressive” dog is actually just being territorial 70% of the time, he said.
“We have people that call and say ‘Hey the dog’s aggressive.’ ‘Okay, what’s it doing?’ ‘It’s in the yard and every time I walk by it slams into the fence,’ Carpenter said. “We’ll ask ‘What do you want us to do about it?’ But he’s not at large. He’s doing his thing. They’re like, ‘Well, it could bite me,’ but it’s on the other side of the fence. We’re in this constant battle with pet owners.”
Sometimes, pet owners will allow their female dog outside while it’s in heat and then become alarmed when multiple male dogs will show up outside their fence, Carpenter said.
Many times, animal control officers will go to the home of an “aggressive” animal only to be licked to death, Carpenter said.
Construction on Odessa’s new animal shelter is expected to be finished soon. The new 20,000 square foot facility will contain 231 kennels, double the number it used to hold.
Own shelter
Ector County Judge Debi Hays said she believes county residents are more concerned with illegal dumping, water and public safety issues than getting an animal shelter.
However, having said that, Hays said, “I’m not opposed to having an animal shelter at all, if that’s something that the community feels that they need. I think those are things that the commissioner’s court should consider especially because sales tax money can be used for that.”
Precinct 1 Commissioner Mike Gardner also lamented the number of people who abandon animals, but said he believes the county has a good working relationship with the city and a private shelter on the west side.
“We’ve got 500 square miles where people can dump dogs in and it’s a shame that people do that. It’s a hard one to fix. Of course we’ll have a couple of new people coming in on the court and it’ll be interesting to see what their ideas are and what they bring to the table and what it could changes,” Gardner said. “All you need is three people on the court to build a shelter. We could probably build one a little bit cheaper than the city did, but you’re still talking millions of dollars to do that.”
Gardner said he’d also be willing to look at funding spay, neuter and vaccination clinics in the future or partnering with a non-profit.
As far as passing leash laws or other pet-related ordinances, Gardner said the county’s hands are tied; the state doesn’t allow for counties to pass such ordinances.
Ector County Judge-Elect Dustin Fawcett said stray animals was probably a top three issue when he was campaigning in Gardendale. It also came up in West Odessa.
He’d like to research the subject of ordinances once he takes office in January, especially when it comes to spaying and neutering. Animals who haven’t been altered don’t know where the city limit signs are and are overloading animal control officers, he said.
Perhaps the county can work with non-profits and create a voucher program, Fawcett said. He’s also interested in vaccination programs.
“We don’t want to put a financial burden on people by having to spay and neuter their dogs if they don’t have the financial means so we can look into those types of things,” Fawcett said. “I know Midland has done some and we’ve talked about it in the City of Odessa. I think there’s a multifaceted approach. I think we can save money on the back end for animal control facilities and the burden on taxpayers that way, if, on the front end, we can control the population.”
