Beyond ‘dog catcher’: Santa Cruz County’s animal control officers have become lifelines for pets and people alike

Todd Stosuy, Santa Cruz County’s animal control field manager, ducked under a clothesline, then a badminton net strung between two trees, before walking up to a small clearing up the hill from Corralitos Creek where a single mattress lay on the ground. He had been here countless times before.

“Johnny!” Stosuy called out. “Are you home?”

A neighbor, who had just held her barking dog back so Stosuy could safely pass by, told him that Johnny Sanchez, the man Stosuy was looking for, had moved within the Watsonville encampment across the road from Safeway to a new location closer to the creek. 

Stosuy found Sanchez at his new spot, lying against a propped-up mattress, barely moving. Colon cancer had taken a lot out of him. His tattoos faded into worn skin, and his thinning hair stuck out, framing a hardened, despondent face.

It had been a month since the county’s animal control office took Sanchez’s two remaining dogs away after his cancer rendered him unable to take care of even himself. Stosuy said Sanchez had been a good dog owner over the 20 years the two men had known each other, sometimes caring better for his dogs than himself. But after Stosuy found Sanchez lying face-down close to the road covered in his own feces, the situation became too urgent to ignore.

Daily visits to people like Sanchez reflect the evolving reality of animal control work in Santa Cruz County, where a team of just four officers does far more than round up strays — officers spend their days navigating a complex web of human relationships while enforcing animal welfare laws across five jurisdictions.

Animal control, they say, has evolved far beyond its “dog catcher” stereotype into a community service that often serves as a bridge between law enforcement and vulnerable populations, including homeless residents and low-income pet owners.

Stosuy had finally convinced Sanchez that his dogs, a pit bull mix named Kilo and Kilo’s daughter, Chloe, would be better off trying to find new homes through the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter. 

Now, a month later, Sanchez asked to see pictures of Kilo, whom he had for nine years — a stocky, grey and white dog with a habit of bringing visitors his favorite toys — in his kennel from earlier that day. 

“I’m lost in this life without them,” Sanchez said. “I think about them every day.”

Stosuy assured him that he would bring him photos of Kilo in his new home as soon as he was adopted. But Kilo is a 10-year-old dog who has been in the shelter for over a month now, so the odds of adoption are looking slim. 

On Aug. 6, Kilo was transferred to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Sacramento where he will be available for adoption, and Chloe remains in the care of the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter.

Modern animal control officers must be part social worker, part law enforcement officer, bringing diplomacy to often tense or even dangerous situations. The agency’s small office in the county animal shelter on Rodriguez Street in Live Oak, decorated with dog photos and equipped with beds for their own pets, serves as headquarters for a team handling dozens of daily calls, ranging from welfare checks to dangerous dog situations.

Stosuy first met Sanchez 20 years ago when the Watsonville man was heavily involved in gang activity and had already spent 12 years in the maximum-security San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, ending his term in 2000. He said they now laugh about their first encounter, in which, during a site visit to an encampment, Sanchez jumped on the hood of Stosuy’s vehicle while he was having a mental health episode and started punching in the windshield.

As Sanchez mellowed out with age, he and Stosuy developed a close working relationship. 

When Stosuy was training his newest animal control officers three years ago, he brought them to Sanchez to show them the importance of establishing stable relationships with communities who remain distrustful of law enforcement. And on recent ride-alongs with the shelter’s board members, Sanchez was the exemplar for the importance of the entrenched community work the department does. “This dog meant so much to this man,” Stosuy said of Kilo and Sanchez.

Now, despite Sanchez not owning dogs anymore, animal control officers check in on him regularly. Since Sanchez doesn’t have a phone, Stosuy was the one to make the call to confirm which case worker from the homeless services agency would pick up Sanchez for his chemotherapy and radiation treatments scheduled that day.

Stosuy has been trying to help Sanchez get into medical housing, too, but Sanchez was just denied from another place with no explanation as to why.

Stosuy estimated that 95% of working for animal control is dealing with people, not animals. Nearly every animal the department’s officers come across is attached to a person in some way, meaning a huge part of each interaction is determined by the type of person encountered, feeding the unpredictable nature of the job.

Two officers offered contrasting examples of encounters with pet owners when they both responded to reports of dogs sitting in hot cars in the past month. When one officer was checking the temperature in the car, the pug’s owner came out and tried to physically fight him, claiming he was attempting to break into his car. In the other case, the dog owner was receptive and apologetic about the situation.

Lisa Holland, the department’s dispatcher, said the public knows very little about what animal control will respond to and what it won’t. About 65% of calls are for issues that can be worked out over the phone or that don’t warrant sending out an officer. 

Some of the common calls that animal control officers don’t respond to are dead wildlife, cats in trees, lost dogs and what they jokingly refer to as “dog in a cold car,” situations that don’t pose an imminent risk to an animal, like someone calling to complain about animals in cars at night.

Holland said the department prioritizes neglected animals that the officers can rescue by responding. Its highest priority call is for an officer in peril.

Officers put themselves in danger every day and are occasionally bitten and attacked by animals and people alike, said Nikki Harding, one of the four animal control officers. Harding recounted a time she was called to photograph a Rottweiler to log it as potentially vicious. She noticed the dog started fixating on her, the hair on its back standing up in a sign of aggression. The owner suddenly grabbed the dog, which lunged and came within inches of her before she was able to escape beyond the gate.

Stosuy was bitten badly when a man on methamphetamine set his dog upon Stosuy, causing the dog to rip into his thigh. He nearly fell backward when he stumbled into a fence, the only thing that kept him upright and alive in that situation, he said. He doesn’t know if the dog was on meth, too.

People have threatened Stosuy with screwdrivers and knives, but he and the other officers don’t resort to weapons — or even carry them, though they are firearms-trained. They practice verbal deescalation as their main method of defense, an approach Stosuy teaches statewide.

Harding spent years as a bartender at JJ’s Saloon and Social Club in Soquel, which she said emboldened her to listen to and level with people, easing tense interactions in the field.

Officers are also exposed to “constant trauma,” Stosuy said, coming across pets so malnourished their ribs jut out and the skin hangs off their bodies, watching videos of and witnessing people tormenting dogs, and dismantling sprawling, bloody cockfighting rings. He keeps a box of the short knives from one cockfighting bust in the office, along with the metal spurs the handlers attach to the roosters’ legs.

Officer Athena del Rosario was on her way back from a call when an acquaintance stopped her, giving her the address of a dog they thought “looked bad.” As she walked up the steps of the porch, a bulldog mix she would later know as Milky lay so still and feeble that del Rosario thought the animal was dead. As del Rosario approached, Milky barely lifted her head, staring up with hollow, tired eyes.

Inside, del Rosario found two other dogs, a mother named Bubbles and her son, Lucas. The animals were in slightly better condition, but the yard was covered in feces and the dogs were illegally chained. Del Rosario seized Milky immediately, but gave the owners 48 hours to clean up for the other dogs. They didn’t. She picked up Bubbles and Lucas shortly after. 

Milky and Lucas were adopted together and now look like strong, healthy dogs — at a glance it’s not possible to know how mistreated they once were. 

The animal control office in the secondary Watsonville shelter has before-and-after photos from a few of the grisliest cases that turned out positively laminated and taped up on the wall above the desk. From left to right, the photo arrangement displays a dog found abandoned in a broken-down car, one huddled up in extreme food deprivation, one with fur so matted its face was unrecognizable and one whose collar rubbed the skin on its neck raw. 

The after photos show happy, healthy and adopted dogs. The whole display reminds them why they do the job, multiple officers said.

But not all cases have positive outcomes. Stosuy said he trains officers to drop off the animals at the shelter and not look back. 

There is a huge emotional toll in watching the animals they rescued end up too hostile to adopt out or too sick or injured to save. Del Rosario’s eyes welled up as she recounted how she’s learned to separate herself from the work this way, accepting that she has no control over most outcomes.

Stosuy said he stopped looking at pictures and videos from cases that weren’t his own because it became too difficult to bear. There was a recent video of people tormenting dogs that an officer used as evidence in a case that Stosuy chose not to watch. Another Ring camera video sent in showed two dogs ripping a cat apart. 

While gruesome to watch, this type of evidence helps the department close cases quickly, Stosuy said.

More often, the cases officers see week-to-week are people who are struggling to manage their pets, but with some education and support they are able to learn to properly care for the animals. Harding said she wished people got animals that better fit their situation, be it financial or spatial.

In almost every case, the officer’s goal is to aid owners in complying with animal welfare standards, keeping dogs out of shelters as much as possible, Stosuy said. It’s only when the circumstances get to be extreme that the department moves to seize animals.

Stosuy served as president of the National Animal Care and Control Association during a tumultuous time from 2011 to 2015. During his tenure, an animal control officer was shot on the job, and there was a subsequent nationwide push for the militarization of animal control. 

Officers wore bulletproof vests for the first time and weighed the merits of carrying weapons, something not often done before in a profession that largely hides its law enforcement badges. The shift was also fueled by “wannabe cops” who were using the job as a steppingstone into the police academy, Stosuy said.

At the center of it all, Stosuy fought for departments to use the community policing methods that Santa Cruz County kept at its core, focusing on forming relationships with residents and approaching people on a human-to-human level.

He learned that years ago, working with a homeless woman named Shorty who wasn’t too keen on law enforcement. When Stosuy let go of the expectations that come with his badge and talked to her like anyone else, trying to figure out how he could help, he actually made headway. He never forgot that lesson, he said.

Animal control officers have connections with most of the homeless people who have pets in the county. Establishing a relationship with people before problems arise is hugely beneficial when any complaints do come up, Stosuy said.

Edward “Scooby” Lovell, another resident of the Watsonville encampment where Sanchez lives, talks with animal control officers whenever they check in and receives supplies from the shelter for his two dogs.

On a recent visit from Harding, Lovell came outside his canopy tent and sat on a short, plastic chair while Luna, his 60-pound black-and-white pit bull mix, lunged at a spiky plastic toy Harding had thrown her way, missing it as it rolled down the hill. 

After noticing a red, itchy hot spot on Luna’s paw, Harding grabbed a bag of food and chewable flea medication from the back seat of her vehicle and passed it over to Lovell.

“Thank you,” he said, grabbing the hefty bag. “This is a huge help.”

Lovell said that animal control officers are helpful and humane, unlike other organizations that have broken his trust or the “mean cops” who come down into the encampment.

Born and raised in Aptos, Lovell became homeless at 17 and said he is followed around stores, looked down upon and treated poorly at every turn as a homeless person. Luna has helped him through his depression and been a consistent, loving presence in his life.

“I don’t have family anymore,” Lovell said. “She’s my family. I love her.”

Luna had a litter of eight puppies three months ago; Lovell gave seven of them up to the shelter for adoption and they’ve already been adopted out. During the visit, Harding told him she would ask to see if Luna could be spayed for free at the shelter or another clinic to prevent her from getting pregnant again, even though the shelter ran out of funds for its previous fixing programs and continues to face serious county budget constraints.

Lovell kept Luna’s favorite puppy, the runt of the litter, which he named Sun in keeping with his celestial theme. Sun trotted around his space, ducking in and out of the canopy and occasionally joining his mom to wrestle on her bed. His floppy ears were just beginning to perk up. 

Harding discussed keeping Sun up to date on his vaccines and making sure he would have everything he needed in Lovell’s care. In the car after leaving Lovell and Sun, Harding scheduled another visit to the encampment in the coming weeks.

Animal control will be back to check on them soon.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.