Approximately two dozen dogs were reveling in the freedom of one of the county’s few off-leash parks on a recent afternoon.
Dogs ranged in size from Chihuahua to German shepherd.
Officer Bill Burrus, one of four animal control officers for Clark County — which provides animal control services countywide with the exception of the cities of Camas, Washougal and Battle Ground — was keeping close watch.
On the owners.
“We could sit here and ticket all day long,” Burrus said, between reminding owners that the dogs need to be on a leash in the parking lot, pets need to be licensed and their poop needs to be scooped.
Think naming a cat Kitty is original? Think again. And Max is the most popular name for dogs in Clark County, according to a database of licensed pets.
Dogs
Max
Buddy
Molly
Lucy
Daisy
Cats
Kitty
Smokey
Bella
Lucy
Max
DOGPAW operates four dog parks in Clark County and will be opening a fifth this month. It’s an all-volunteer nonprofit organization supported by members and donations. Membership costs $15 per year for individuals, $25 for families. To learn more, go to http://clarkdogpaw.org.
There’s no charge to license assistance dogs, and senior citizens receive a 50 percent discount for one spayed or neutered cat and one spayed or neutered dog.
Otherwise, annual licenses for fertile dogs are $40; fertile cats are $20. Spayed or neutered dogs are $16; fixed cats are $10.
Get information on pet licensing at 360-397-2488 or http://www.clark.wa.gov/commdev/animal.
He gave one dog owner, who got two unleashed dogs out of his vehicle in the parking lot, two disposable leashes.
“I could have written tickets. That’s $100 in violations, $50 each,” he said. But he let the man off with a warning.
“He apologized. He said he left his leash at home,” Burrus said.
While animal control officers prefer to let first-time offenders off with a warning, animal control manager Paul Scarpelli said complaints about dogs are on the rise.
“People can’t seem to follow the signs,” said Scarpelli. “Perhaps we need to start writing more tickets and get people to change their behavior.”
Tickets are $25 and up; a third-time offender who gets cited for not scooping poop would be ticketed $300.
While the volunteer group that manages dog parks in the county would like an increased presence from animal control — and Scarpelli’s willing to step up patrol — officers are stretched thin.
The same day Burrus was patrolling Dakota Memorial Dog Park at Pacific Community Park in east Vancouver, 106 people called animal control.
The office, staffed by a dispatcher and a clerk, received 25,679 calls in 2010, up from 23,975 in 2009.
But tickets were down last year to 721; 960 tickets were issued in 2009.
Hours restored
The reason for the decrease in tickets? Officers, whose weekly hours had been cut from 40 to 36, were busy running from call to call. They were generous with warnings because they didn’t want to take the time to write a ticket, Scarpelli said.
This year, Scarpelli has rearranged his budget, which is nearly $1.7 million for the next two years, to get the hours back.
While dog park volunteers want animal control officers to increase their visibility, Scarpelli wishes more people would simply follow the laws.
That includes licensing their pets.
His budget should be covered by licensing fees, but because so many pet owners ignore the licensing law, the rest of the taxpayers make up the difference.
There are 18,474 dogs and 6,761 cats licensed in the county; national statistics on pet ownership suggest that’s only 16 percent of the dogs and cats that actually live here.
Licensing fees bring in $765,000 a year. The balance of the budget, about $76,000 per year, comes from the county’s general fund.
Scarpelli said that if pet owners understood that dog and cat licensing fees pay for animal control services countywide, they’d be more apt to pay.
“Let’s dream big and go double, from 16 to 32 percent, which is still pathetic,” Scarpelli said.
That money would cover two additional officers, laptop computers so officers could refer to the county database when they are out on the field (to check an animal’s history or whether a pet owner has already been warned) public education and more.
“I would very, very much like two more officers because of demand,” said Scarpelli, whose officers work seven days a week. “When someone is ill, or officers are on vacation, we are down to one officer.”
That isn’t fair to the officer or to residents, he said.
That also explains why callers who complain about a neighbor’s barking dog don’t get an immediate response or callers who report a stray cat are told to drive it to the Humane Society for Southwest Washington.
“The citizens are getting what they are willing to pay for,” he said.
Parks popular, problematic
The Dakota Memorial Dog Park is a popular spot, rain or shine, as are other off-leash areas in the county: Ross Recreation Area in west Vancouver, Brush Prairie Dog Park and Stevenson Off-Leash Area in Washougal. A fifth off-leash area will open this month in Hockinson Meadows Community Park.
As much as dog owners and dogs like the room to run and play, the parks have created problems, too.
The parks are maintained by DOGPAW, a nonprofit organization whose volunteers do their best to inform users of park rules.
Mark Heiny, director of park development for DOGPAW, said his group would like to see an increased presence of animal control officers because as volunteers, his group can only inform people of the rules.
He emphasized that a small group of dog owners cause the problems.
Volunteer Arleen Chester said DOGPAW rules go beyond county and city code in order to minimize problems.
Among those rules: dogs younger than 4 months old, female dogs in heat, sick dogs and unaltered male dogs older than 1 are not allowed.
That last rule gets violated frequently, Chester said, pointing out an unaltered male.
Chester and Kathleen Hansen, president of DOGPAW, said the reactions of people who are informed that they are in violation range from receptive to rude.
Beyond what volunteers observe at the parks, calls have been coming in to animal control.
Burrus has received complaints about dogs’ being left behind at parks by owners who go off and run errands, and calls from owners who get upset when their dogs get in a fight.
It’s difficult to determine which dog was at fault when dogs are allowed to be off-leash, Burrus said, and whether a dog should be labeled a dangerous dog.
That label puts greater restrictions on how the animal must be kept.
Once, a pit bull mauled a dachshund at a dog park, and the dachshund had to be euthanized.
Both dogs were legally off-leash when the fight occurred, Burrus said, and according to witnesses, the dachshund picked the fight.
That could have happened, Burrus said.
“Little dogs have big attitudes,” he said.
In addition to the parks, Burrus will also be doing additional patrol, by bicycle, on the Burnt Bridge Creek and Salmon Creek trails. The office has been getting more complaints about unleashed dogs’ fighting and tripping up runners, Burrus said. He’ll be looking for dogs that are unlicensed or unleashed. And for owners who disregard that other key rule.
