Day in the Life of Animal Control
By Eric Abernethy
13 Nov 2007
The photos are a sequence of photos of a pit bull and Siberian husky attacking each other. When I arrived the owner was peeking out of the front door of her home and no one else was around. I started shooting and captured some powerful images of two animals fighting for dominance. However I feel the true story behind the story is the danger of an understaffed animal control office. In our city, there is one and only one officer, Jody Wilson. At great risk Wilson nooses the Siberian husky and with the pit bull still clamped onto the Siberian husky Wilson drags both dogs to the back of her truck. She asked me to open the doors for her as she pulled both dogs closer to the kennels. Wilson then lifts both dogs in the air and the pit bull drops off just as the male owner arrives on the scene. Great timing on his part.
Wilson is a trained professional and her calmness amazed me, she has obviously been in this situation many times. I feel this situation perhaps would have been much safer for her had their been two officers with two nooses. Controlling just one animal at a time just did not seem safe. I felt uneasy taking the pictures because we were leaving ourselves exposed to the other animal when caging the Siberian husky. I was afraid that once one dog was noosed the other would go after Jody or me or anyone arriving on the scene. I asked Wilson about this and she said the dogs were fighting for dominance and the dogs were not concerned about our human presence. In reality she was correct, neither dog was aggressive to any of us at anytime. But you never know when an animal will attack.
What these photos mean to me is simple, the city of Asheboro has an understaffed animal control unit. Had their been two officers responding to this scene, both dogs could have been noosed within a minute or two. Instead, it took Jody around 7 minutes maybe longer, to noose just one dog and the whole time she was vulnerable to the other dog. Wilson says shes tackles situations like this on a weekly basis.
