When King County animal-control officer Pam McClaren walked into the abandoned East Hill house earlier this month with a search warrant, it was all she could do not to lose her cool.
The three dogs had been left in the home for roughly three weeks, faring as best they could with little food or water.
“It was horrible. They were eating everything – dirty diapers, anything they could,” said McClaren, of the two pitbulls and a dachshund she found clinging to life.
“In my opinion, the little dachshund, if it were there another day, it would have been dead,” she said of the dog, which was a mere 3.12 pounds when it was weighed after being confiscated. “It wasn’t nothing but skin and bones and the eyes were sunken in.”
In her 27 years on the job, the case – which has resulted in felony charges against the dogs’ owner – is not completely new to McClaren.
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” she said.
But she admits she was shaken when she saw the malnourished dachshund pulling its shrunken body through a tiny opening in the wall.
“There was no muscle mass, nothing,” she said.
Today, the miniature dachshund is a lively little 8-pounder. And the two pit bulls – one of which weighed just 34 pounds, about half the weight it should have been – are recovering as well. All have been kenneled at the Kent Animal Shelter, where they were taken after being confiscated in early September from the house at 100th Avenue Southeast and Southeast 212th Street. Worried neighbors had alerted animal-control officers to the home.
The owner, whose home had gone into foreclosure, McClaren tracked down in Skyway.
There will be a pending court date, for two three counts of animal cruelty – felonies – and three counts of animal abandonment, the officer noted.
For McClaren, and the other officers who clean up for irresponsible pet owners, it’s part of an ongoing battle that’s become worse as the economy has soured. When people are struggling to make ends meet, their pets often are the biggest losers in the equation.
“Animals take the brunt,” she said.
Animal rescue costs money, and in King County, a chunk of that money comes from the animal-licensing fees that pet owners are legally required to pay each year.
License fees aren’t just for services that pet owners get for their own animals. The dollars that owners put into the system help fund the large pool of animals that wind up in the care of King County Regional Animal Services.
Those dollars pay for kenneling, food, medicines, and the other tangibles that go into caring for a pet population that often arrives in marginal health.
“A lot of people think they’re paying my salary – they’re not,” said McClaren, whose paycheck comes out of the county general fund, like the rest of the county’s employees. “They’re paying (license fees) to keep another dog, another cat, alive.”
When a pet owner pays for a license fee, about 75 percent of that fee, McClaren said, goes into funding animal care in the county system.
“It goes to help other animals,” she said. “Spay-neutering, feeding, medicines and kenneling.”
McClaren jokingly refers to herself as the “pit bull of King County Animal Control” because of her no-nonsense persistence in rectifying animal-abuse cases. But she’s quick to acknowledge that when pet owners are willing to work with her, she’ll go out of her way to help them out.
“I know times are hard,” she said. “I will work with you, as long as you work with me. But if you stop working with me, I will be your worst nightmare.”
She’s been known to bring food, leashes and other items to pet owners who couldn’t otherwise afford them. For five years, she regularly dropped off dog food to one pet owner who had been partly paralyzed in an accident and had trouble keeping his dog fed.
The point, McClaren said, is to simply ensure animals get good treatment. And if it can be done through collaboration, then that is what she, and the other enforcement officers, would prefer to do.
“If we can’t help them, we will find someone who can,” she said. “We’re not going to leave them out in the cold.”
Learn more
To learn more about programs that can assist pet owners with spay/neuter services and other needs, contact Regional Animal Services of King County at 206-296-PETS, or go online to www.kingcounty.gov/safety/regionalAnimalServices.aspx
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