As a dog lover, Thompson, who lives in Havasu, couldn’t stand by and let the dog continue to suffer in the heat, so she began a search that brought her to the area almost every day and ended with the fourth dog in her house – Wiley the Chihuahua.
Thompson began making time during each patrol to stop by to look for the dog. She talked with people at the different gas stations and restaurants in the area and began to piece together what had happened.
“Depending on who you talked to, it was all types of dogs,” Thompson said. “They just said it was a little ball of fur.”
Someone had seen a trucker drop the dog out of a window and drive off, she said. At one point, the dog got stuck in a cattle guard near the Pilot right before the entrance to the interstate, and a woman from the Pilot had to run into the street to stop a truck from running over the dog.
Workers at all of the stores in the area had seen the dog, fed it snacks or even chased it, but no one had been able to get their hands on it.
After a few days of hiking all over the area, Thompson began to close in on the dog’s whereabouts. She discovered an abandoned tent the dog had likely been using as a base. She even offered to pay the transient $50 to keep an eye on a trap she left by the tent.
“When she saw me coming up the wash, she went off running and that’s what she did to everyone,” she said. “It was getting hotter, and I was afraid the heat was going to kill (the dog), let alone the coyotes.”
But just hours before Thompson was scheduled to leave town to patrol in Colorado City, she got a call that the dog found its way into its cage and was ready to be taken home.
“I promised her I would keep her forever if I caught her,” Thompson said.
One of thousands
The Mohave County Sheriff’s Department received more than 4,600 animal control calls in 2013, including 62 in Desert Hills, 11 in Horizon Six and more than a dozen from Lake Havasu City. The calls range from animal bites to stray animals, lost or found animals and people concerned with an animal’s welfare.
The Sheriff’s Department is responsible for animal control throughout the unincorporated parts of the county and all of the deputies are trained to handle situations with animals.
“It’s a tremendous problem… abandoned dogs and people not caring for them,” Sheriff Tom Sheahan said during an interview in June. “It’s a problem that doesn’t need to be as big as it is.”
Five animal control officers cover the entire county, which is more than 13,000 square miles. Sheahan said they run calls one after another during their shifts. He said long drives eat into their time, with calls far more dispersed than what city animal control units face. The department could easily use another three to five animal control officers, Sheahan said.
Animal control takes the dogs to a shelter in Kingman that is run by the Western Arizona Humane Society, but everyone from the sheriff to county supervisors to the humane society director Patty Gilmore agree it is in terrible condition and inadequate for the county’s needs. The Board of Supervisors has discussed building a new county shelter with capital dollars generated by a quarter-cent sales tax that expires at the end of 2019, but plans are still tentative and nothing has been agreed on.
The humane society’s contract with the county was recently renewed and began again July 1. During the 2012-2013 fiscal year, the county shelter received more than 4,400 animals, adopted 940, returned nearly 300 to their owner and euthanized about 2,600 animals, according to the humane society’s contract renewal proposal. The number of animals euthanized has decreased by more than 1,000 since 2010.
“It has been a very positive result, because those are people very well trained in animal care and treatment and put a high priority on finding homes for the animals,” Sheahan said of the humane society’s contract. “We felt it was best to leave it to the experts.”
Sheahan said the number one cause of abandoned animals was owner irresponsibility. He said people often let their dogs go when they need to move, lose a job or have other life-changing events. As a dog owner himself, Sheahan said it is important that people understand their pets rely on them for everything and that abandoning them has real consequences.
‘Not dog poor’
Wiley is not Thompson’s first dog - Chunk, Bubbles and Boo also gathered around the house’s shared dog bowl. But Thompson said Wiley gets along well with the other dogs, even if she is a little bossy at times.
“I’m not dog poor, I need another dog like a hole in the head,” Thompson said.
Thompson said Wiley is still sleeping in her room and sits outside her door at night until Thompson lets her in. At times, Thompson said, Wiley likes to think she is the house’s top dog.
“Chihuahuas are bossy, so if one of (the other dogs) is sitting on your lap, she will come and nip at them,” Thompson said.
At one point, Wiley and Chunk were playing in the living room. Chunk was running laps around Thompson’s sectional couch as Wiley took refuge beneath a coffee table. But when Chunk playfully came at Wiley, Wiley lunged toward him with a sharp but high-pitched growl. Chunk, at least five times the size of Wiley, backtracked in fear.
“That’s probably how she survived,” Thompson said with a smile.
(Today's News-Herald - July 7, 2014)
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