Working for the County

I

Three years back when I still worked for the county, a woman called to notify us that her neighbor was hoarding dogs at a residence within the city limits, where—by decree of Ordinance 871—only four dogs per household were permitted. So I grabbed my brown uniform jacket and I took a van to the address. It was October, but already freezing. I stood on the front porch and heard barking inside, but no one answered after I pounded my fist against the door. Must be at work, I thought. I took a cell phone video outside the house which captured the sound of the dogs and the sight of my breath fogging in the cold air, then I taped a yellow notice to the door. I showed the video to our clerk and his eyes went wide. He guessed fifty dogs were in the house. I showed one of our kennel staff and asked her. She turned away and rubbed her eyes and also guessed fifty. We would be over double capacity, she said, if we impounded fifty dogs. My boss, Kelly, also guessed fifty. Our minds were full of fives and zeros. We didn’t have money pooled or anything, but I was annoyed that everyone shared my guess. 

II

Kelly had done this job for decades. She and I were the ones who took possession of animals on behalf of the county if the courts deemed it necessary, or if someone died. If a shut-in died alone, there was a good chance their pets would be dead or in the process of dying by the time we showed up. Kelly told me she got a call once and walked in on a guy with his feet propped up on an ottoman. His yellow toenails had grown in the time it took someone to finally worry about him, and his cats needed to be bagged up. Kelly had to do that herself, but this was no big deal because she euthanized dogs and cats for the county every morning. But the toenails always stuck with her, she told me. It bothered me to hear stories like this at first, but I got used to things as best I could. Shortly after I first started, I found a dead man on a couch, sitting up, shirtless, surrounded by empty liquor bottles. His eyes were half-closed, skin green, torso bloated like a beach ball. His hair was neatly parted and his purple lips frowned. I had worked for the sheriff’s department before animal control, so the dead guy didn’t bother me. It was the dog that did it. A white pit bull lay curled up near the couch in bad shape. Her red heart-shaped name tag read, Lucy, and we struggled to find her a new home. I slept awful until I adopted her myself. Kelly and I were different. It was the animals that messed me up like that, not the people. I couldn’t care less what happened to the people, but I would give every ounce of myself for their pets.  

III

The judge was always too serious—Judge Judy we called her. She didn’t react to the video of the barking. She signed the warrant, but didn’t guess how many dogs. She didn’t comment on the dog hoarder, Pat, who knew we were coming. Kelly had spoken with him on the phone. He worked for the Geek Squad at Best Buy, and when we showed up his work van was parked right in the damn driveway, full of junk. We put on our masks and gloves and took our buckets and catch poles to the front door. Pat answered. He straightened his glasses and came out on the porch and you could hear the barking behind him, but he was polite. He knew we were coming. We walked through the front door past stacks of magazines and newspapers. The gray dogs surrounded us after that, little yorkie mutts that had probably been breeding in the house for years, flashes of yellow teeth as they snarled and nipped at our heels. I wish I could say the house smelled like Glade PlugIns. I wish I could say Kelly and I didn’t need our rubber boots, especially in the kitchen. We went down to the basement with our flashlights and found bags of dog food stacked up in the dark. I wish I could say we found laundry machines or cleaning supplies down there, but we didn’t. It took all day to get the dogs out. Pat shadowed us while we worked, but he didn’t get in the way. Either he had names for all the dogs or he was making them up on the spot as we carried each one out, eighty-three in total, which would increase later because several were pregnant. I wish I could say Pat’s house felt more normal without the dogs. There was a recliner and a forty-two-inch flatscreen in the living room, but no family pictures hanging anywhere. The bathroom on the first floor was nautical-themed with seashell decorations, but there was no shower curtain. And there were no beds anywhere in the house. Pat told me the dogs slept in the bedrooms, so I asked where he slept. He pointed at the recliner near the TV. Every night before I finally quit that job, I dreamt of Pat sleeping in that old chair in the living room, waking up surrounded by all of his friends in the whole world. Now I do rideshare apps, carting drunk kids to the drive-thrus on campus at two in the morning. Sometimes we pass by animal control and a passenger comments about it, but I don’t say much. I tell them I used to work there and I think about Kelly. I heard she resigned last summer.