Animals’ best friend checks into abuse allegations

Trisha Kraff’s morning on June 30 began with a complaint about someone selling black widow spiders and their babies on Facebook.

Kraff called the state Department of Agriculture, which referred her to the state veterinarian.

“It doesn’t sound right,” Kraff said, dialing the phone. “I don’t want to live in a house that raises black widow spiders — or live next door to one.”

It was just another day at work for Kraff, who’s seen her share of weird, horrific and sad things in her 11 years as a Clark County animal control officer.

Dull and repetitive her job is not. Every day, the dispatch center receives about 100 calls from angry, upset and excited people reporting all manner of animal-related incidents: dogs in hot cars, horses languishing with untreated medical conditions, cat hoarders, pets left behind when their families move, roadkill.

Experience has taught Kraff, 44, to take the callers’ often dramatic details with a grain of salt until she checks them out for herself. People tend to embellish the truth, “which makes our job a little bit tougher,” Kraff said.

But she loves her work.

“I don’t want to do anything else. This was meant for me,” she said, climbing into the white county van stocked with dog treats and several sizes of cloth dog muzzles.

Rows of metal cages fill the back of the van, which is air-conditioned. A small woman who stands 5 feet tall, Kraff carries pepper spray, a collapsible baton, a control stick and a heavy clipboard, which she can use as a barrier between herself and animals — or people. But her biggest weapons are her gift of gab and common sense.

“My biggest problem is with people. People can be nasty,” Kraff said.

As one of four animal control officers who cover Clark County’s 656-square-mile area, Kraff is assigned the east Vancouver jurisdiction. Animal control, which is part of the county’s Community Development department, once had 11 staff members. Since the belt-tightening of the Great Recession, however, seven now carry the load.

Running on a skeleton crew, Clark County’s animal control officers are stretched thin, rushing from case to case. They spend significant time following up on previous contacts. Their efforts over the years have resulted in numerous cruelty charges in cases involving horses, cats, dogs, goats and cows. Most are civil cases, which levy a $250 fine per violation, but the officers have referred several criminal complaints to the judicial system, Kraff said.

The work involves public education, hand-holding and plenty of licensing enforcement, said Kraff, who said she enjoys teaching people to be responsible pet owners. Getting through to them can make a difference not only for their animals, but also for their children, who will learn animal-care habits from their parents.

“But sometimes, people just don’t want to hear what you say,” Kraff acknowledged.

Paul Scarpelli, manager of Clark County’s animal control division, along with finance and code enforcement, said Kraff is well-respected throughout the region and state for her work. Also, he said he has never received a complaint about Kraff, “which tells me she gets along well with all walks of life,” Scarpelli said.

“I’m very pleased that she’s on my staff, and certainly appreciate her energy and knowledge,” he said Friday.

Seated behind the wheel of the van June 30, Kraff sorted through printouts of the complaints she was to investigate that day, in addition to any emergency calls from dispatch. There were three loose dogs reported in different neighborhoods, but none made an appearance when Kraff showed up. Nor did Kraff come upon the body of a domestic rabbit that was reportedly cluttering the road near the Camas airfield.

The dead tabby cat on a 166th Place resident’s front lawn was hard to miss, though. It had been gutted, and from the looks of it, the violence was the work of a bobcat, Kraff told the homeowner.

As the sun beat down, Kraff pulled on plastic gloves, scanned the cat’s neck for a microchip (there wasn’t one) and took photos of the scene. She spied a large pawprint in a flower bed, perhaps a bobcat’s. Then she held up the deceased tabby, examined it from all angles and deposited it into a clear trash bag.

She’s always had a strong stomach; Kraff was a local veterinary technician for 15 years before taking this job. She has lived in Clark County since age 12.

At the veterinary office, she saw many responsible pet owners. That was a good feeling. In her current line of work, though, she tends to see people in denial that their animals are suffering, she said.

As the day wore on, Kraff investigated two reports of animal cruelty phoned in by neighbors. One was regarding two barking dogs allegedly left neglected in an outdoor dog run by an owner who was rarely home. Kraff peered through the wooden fence and saw the dogs had shade, food and water. After a couple of interrogatory woofs, the dogs settled down. Kraff passed out business cards to the neighbors, told them the dogs appeared to be OK and stuck a business card in the owner’s front door.

The next cruelty report was about a man who allegedly was keeping 12 dogs in an unventilated garage. As it turned out, the garage did contain six large-breed dogs in separate kennels. However, an air conditioner was running, the dogs had water, their kennels were clean, and their owner said he let them out to run in the yard several times daily. The man said he had six more dogs in the house.

Kraff warned the man that to have nine or more adult dogs, the county required a kennel license, and that his setup didn’t qualify for one. He also needed to license his dogs, and if he didn’t show progress on that soon, she would cite him a $100 fine per dog, Kraff said.

Soon after, at a sprawling rural property in Washougal, Kraff talked to a woman in her 80s whose dog killed the next-door neighbor’s dog three months ago. The woman’s dog had recently injured the neighbor’s other dog in a fight, and the neighbor wanted the woman to pay the $500 veterinary bill.

The temperature climbed into the 90s. Three calls came in reporting dogs in cars at Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer, but in each case, the vehicles were gone by the time Kraff arrived.

Under the law, for an officer to enter a vehicle, it’s not enough for a dog to be barking and panting. The animal must be in distress. That means it’s starting to become lethargic, and its tongue is turning dark, she said.

When the situation is dire enough for her to launch a rescue and the dog’s owner shows up, the owner is invariably furious with her, saying he or she was only gone for a minute.

A law that goes into effect July 24 states a licensed officer may enter a vehicle if the conditions may endanger the health and well-being of the animal.

Between the intricacies of the law and the unpredictability of animal handling, there’s a lot to know. Kraff has attended numerous training sessions, including an animal control course at the Criminal Justice Training Center in Burien. She’s on the Interstate 5 corridor’s dogfighting task force, she said, recounting a major dogfighting bust on Lower River Road in 2004. Kraff also is vice chair of the Animal MAC-G Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization and is a volunteer for the Field Incident Response team for the ASPCA, which once sent her to New York to help with a cockfighting ring investigation and rescue operation of 5,000 fighting cocks.

“I want to be a solution for all animals, not just our local ones,” she said.

After placing the dead cat in a walk-in cooler at the Humane Society for Southwest Washington and checking out another dog-in-hot-car call, Kraff’s shift was over. Tomorrow would be a new day full of surprises — and Kraff would be ready.

“Somebody needs to do it,” she said.