CRESTVIEW — The city and county’s animal control agency was in the spotlight when Crestview City Councilmen took turns questioning representatives of the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society, or PAWS.
“We've had some concerns and some complaints, and we understand the complaints are not always valid,” Councilman JB Whitten said.
PAWS director Dee Thompson and Mary Rutter, PAWS’ supervisor of animal control, responded to questions during a June 27 workshop.
Q: What kind of training program does PAWS have?
A: PAWS officers are state-certified and take both classroom and field training. Training includes use of equipment, euthanasia and capturing animals using equipment and chemical means, including dart guns.
Q: What is “chemical capture”?
A: “It's like a blow gun; you blow a dart out of a tube,” Thompson said, adding animal control officers also use CO2 dart guns. “It would be like if you have a big dog or a coyote, it can be used to tranquilize them. We don't ever use it on a cat. It's not a weapon of choice because you can't be sure what an animal's going to do. It's a very last resort. Larger animals, it sometimes makes more excited.”
Q: What do you do when the office is closed?
A: Officers respond to emergency situations 24 hours a day. Two officers live in the Crestview area and can respond to local emergencies, such as animals hit by a car “and drunk drivers with their dog with them,” Thompson said. “Why would someone want to take their dog to a bar I don't understand.”
Q: How many cities or agencies does PAWS contract with?
A: Crestview, Fort Walton Beach, Destin, unincorporated Okaloosa County, Eglin Air Force Base and Laurel Hill.
Q: What's PAWS’ average response time?
A: “During business hours it should be pretty quickly,” Thompson said. After hours it depends on where the resident is. “It should be no more than 20 or 30 minutes,” she said.
Q: How much does Crestview pay PAWS for animal control services?
A: PAWS’ fee is based on population, at $4.23 per resident. Crestview pays $85,000 a year. “When we took over you were paying close to $150,000,” Thompson said. “When we took it over we brought it down to $85,000 and we tripled the amount of service.”
Q: Can you address the low satisfaction rating PAWS currently has?
A: “I think because we're dealing with situations where somebody is going to be happy and somebody's not going to be happy, and the people who are not happy talk way louder,” Thompson said.
“They don't want us to kill them (animals) and they don't want us to put them back on the streets. It's difficult to do what we do, but we do it with our heart.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: PAWS responds to Crestview concerns, criticisms