Animal control officer embraces role serving Green Forest

Officially, Angel Rodriguez is the animal control officer for the city of Green Forest.

But just in case there’s any confusion, Rodriguez wants everyone to know he is “not a dog catcher.” He’s not a police officer, either. His mission, he says, is to provide a service to both animals and people in “my beautiful city.”

“My whole job is, I need to get these guys, take care of them and find them a home,” Rodriguez said.

In order to be successful, Rodriguez said, he needs the community to trust him and understand that he wants to work for their benefit.

“I want you to call me or send me a text and tell me ‘hey, my dog is missing!’ he said. “I log that in and then if I find that dog, I’m taking it to you. I’m restoring a family.”

“He has to be not only the dog whisperer or the cat whisperer,” Cole Wakfield, executive director of the Good Shepherd Humane Society, said of Rodriguez. “He’s got to be the people whisperer because he’s got to be able to go into a community and ask questions and get people to tell him where these animals belong or what’s going on or get somebody to open up to him.”

Rodriguez is on the front lines as Green Forest takes what police chief John Bailey describes as a “new approach” to animal welfare. Rather than being reactive or punitive when issues with animals arise, the goal for Rodriguez is to be proactive and serve as a resource.

“I’m not a police officer at all,” he said, citing the example of a dog running loose.

“We have to find out why,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is help solve the problem.”

Good Shepherd is there to help Rodriguez thrive in his role, providing mentoring and training.

“The Humane Society of the United States has a mentorship program and their model that they’ve developed over the years is what we’re doing now,” Wakefield said. “They try to find a place in an area that’s already doing a lot of this stuff, which Good Shepherd was doing, and to help the smaller places around them start picking that up. So they gave us a grant to support that and we’re helping out a couple of places.”

The timing was right for a partnership between Good Shepherd and Green Forest, Wakefield said. Mayor Don McNeely, who took office in January, has been very supportive, as has Bailey. And the partnership offers Rodriguez a place to go for help.

“Myself and several members of our staff have spent several days,” Wakefield said. “We run down here and help him all the time.”

Good Shepherd helps make additional training available to Rodriguez, and Wakefield is always available to help.

“He knows he can call me 24/7 with questions or just for advice or just to vent sometimes, which is important,” Wakefield said.

Rodriguez has been on the job for two years. His daughter worked in animal control in Philadelphia, he said.

“She would call me every day: ‘Dad, look at this dog!’ ” he said. “You would see her whole demeanor, her whole spirit, just glow.”

When Rodriguez moved to Green Forest from California, he said, “it fell on my heart,” to apply for the animal control officer position.

Watching Rodriguez work briefly for a few minutes with dogs at the animal control office, his passion for the job is obvious — along with his love for and patience with the animals. Among the dogs at the office on Friday, Oct. 13, were Lucky — a female who is heartworm-positive and whose treatment is being sponsored by Good Shepherd — and Scoob, a young male whose lead Rodriguez patiently untangled.

“We got really lucky here, getting somebody with such great passion,” Wakefield said. “He’s been gung-ho about making things better and being proactive and adopting best practices — which is hard to do in small towns because resources are limited for everything. But a lot of what it takes is just the right attitude and some ingenuity and creativity and partnerships like we’re doing and we can accomplish a lot of good things.”

One challenge Rodriguez faces is time management. Between working to computerize the city’s animal control records, responding to calls and making sure the animals in his care are being properly cleaned, fed and socialized, there’s not a lot of down time. Rodriguez also delivers animal food to local food banks and even provides nail trimming services on occasion.

“He spent an hour this morning,” Wakefield said. “There were some puppies running loose. He picked them up. Before he brought them in, he spent an hour driving around a neighborhood looking, talking to people, trying to figure out if there’s any hints as to where these animals came from. That effort can mean the difference between a dog sometimes going to a shelter and later being euthanized for space, or returnng home.”

Wakefield hopes the partnership between Good Shepherd and Green Forest can serve as a sort of blueprint for animal welfare organizations working with small communities throughout the country.

Wakefield and Rodriguez have been selected to present a workshop at next spring’s national Animal Care Expo in San Antonio. The expo, organized by the Humane Society of the United States, will be held May 15-18 in San Antonio. It is the largest gathering of animal welfare advocates in the world.

“He’s nervous about it,” Wakefield said of Rodriguez. “I’ve done it a couple of times so I’m not as nervous. We’re going to talk about this partnership — some of the good things, some of the things we’ve tried that maybe didn’t work, what problems we’ve encountered, but how we’ve been successful and how can we take this sort of mentorship model — especially in rural areas. We’re lacking this sort of professional development significantly in rural areas. So we need to figure out how we can repeat this and use Green Forest as a model for helping rural areas adopt these more forward-looking policies and procedures. And Angel’s going to tell them all about it.”