Rez littered with stray dogs

WINDOW ROCK, August 9, 2007

Gordon Nez was preparing a field for an archery tournament east of Tsé Bonito, N.M., last week when he and his crew heard puppies whining.

Not one puppy. Not two puppies.

Lots of puppies.

The men followed the sound to a wash that was rapidly rising in the wake of a thunderstorm.

"Puppies were crawling out from every rock where their mothers had left them," Nez said. "We counted three litters."

Nez rounded up as many puppies as he could - 14 in all.

"And if you've never seen a 50-year-old man chasing 14 puppies, it was a comical sight," he noted.

His mother took two, his sister took two and the rest were farmed out to Blackhat Humane Society volunteers in Fort Defiance and Crownpoint, to be fostered until they can be put up for adoption.

You may think this is a heartwarming story.

Nez, a residential supervisor for St. Michael's Association for Special Education Inc., doesn't see it that way.

"What are we coming to on Navajo when every time it rains we have dozens of feral puppies crawling out of every wash?" Nez asked rhetorically. "For every one we saved, I'm sure at least two ran out on the road and died. We have to take care of this problem."

Don't tell it to Olin Arviso. No one knows the extent of the problem better than the Navajo Nation's top animal control officer.

Arviso estimates at least 1,500 stray dogs roam the Navajo Nation. But when you factor in what he calls "owned strays" - unrestrained dogs that often roam in up to a two-mile radius from their homes - the problem at least quadruples.

The strays - owned and unowned - account for 650 bites to humans a year on the reservation, and 450 injuries or deaths to livestock.

Navajo Nation Animal Control's seven officers impound and euthanize about 8,000 dogs a year. Another 400 are adopted from the tribe's five shelters in Fort Defiance, Shiprock, Crownpoint, Many Farms, Ariz., and Tuba City.

Although Arviso suspects the vast majority of dogs in the shelters are owned, only about 20 percent get back to their owners.

"If they don't have a tag, which most of them don't, we have no way of knowing who they belong to," he said.

Some owners may simply elect not to pick up their pet, as it usually means a fine for letting them run loose or not having a rabies tag. Since they only have five days to claim the dog before it is euthanized, some may not even miss it.

Many tribal members are surprised to learn the Navajo Nation even has a dog ordinance, so seldom is it followed. According to the tribal code, every dog must be licensed, restrained and have a rabies tag, yet it's rare to even see a dog with a collar.

Arviso admits his officers don't do a great job of enforcing the ordinances. They're too busy coping with emergencies.

With seven officers - one per agency - on the reservation's 27,000 square miles, "our first priority has to be livestock damage and dog bite cases," Arviso said. "If someone calls for a stray dog pickup, we may not get to it until we're in the area for a dog bite case."

Officers typically drive 100 to 150 miles per day to cover their areas, and depending on where they are, it could take them two hours to respond to a call.

Even once the officer gets there, there's often little he or she can do.

"Unless we have proof of which dog killed or injured the livestock, we can't cite the owner," Arviso explained. And that's often hard to determine when dogs run in packs and go after a lamb or foal.

Since such an offense requires the dog to be put to death, the officers are reluctant to write a ticket unless they know for sure, Arviso said.

What would it take for his division to get the dog problem under control?

"I'd like at least three officers in each agency, and a budget of $1.2 million," Arviso said.

That's more than twice as much as Animal Control gets now, and Arviso realizes it's a pipe dream.

"You don't hear the council talking about dogs until somebody gets bitten," Arivso said. "Then all of a sudden it's a high priority. Then time passes and it goes back to being a non-priority."

In the meantime, Arviso is trying to tackle the problem through education.

"Part of what we do is presentations to schools and chapters," he said. "We're happy to come to a group and talk to them about spaying and neutering, keeping dogs tied up, and proper pet care."

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