County To Unleash Dogcatcher Animal Control Director Leaving To Take Florida Job
Marianne Sinclair was mauled by a wolf hybrid, bitten by a drug dealer’s Rottweiler and threatened by the most dangerous creature of them all - a piqued pet owner with a rifle.
All in all, it’s been a fun 15 years, she says.
But her enthusiasm for 100-hour work weeks, politicians’ beratings and taunts of “dog killer” is waning.
Sinclair, 45, is resigning in two weeks as director of Spokane County Animal Control and headed for the ocean breezes of Naples, Fla. She will run the Collier County Humane Society and live with her mother.
While despised by many pet owners, Sinclair is beloved by co-workers and even county commissioners who have hassled her for years after receiving complaints from constituents about animal control’s heavy-handed tactics.
“It is true that Marianne and I have gone ‘round and ‘round, but I like her a lot,” County Commissioner Steve Hasson says. “She’s done a good job all these years. It’s simply the awfulest job one could ever construe.”
Corralling two black bear cubs, herding a moose away from Pines Road and plucking a cougar from a telephone pole were nothing for Sinclair.
Her job really got exciting when the wolf-dog lunged at her throat and put her in the hospital during the winter of 1991. It happened the day America started bombing Iraq and it still leaves her with nightmares.
“I healed physically, but emotionally it took a long time,” she says.
Sinclair was born and raised near Washington, D.C.’s, Rock Creek Park and was a magnet for stray and injured animals. Birds, rabbits and turtles always found their way to the blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl. “I’ve always loved animals.”
She turned a college degree in animal science into a career rounding up strays, enforcing laws against cruelty and advocating pet sterilization.
The number of unwanted dogs and cats killed by lethal injection at the Spokane County Animal Shelter is down nearly half from 3,000 a year. Sinclair gets the credit.
Her dream of a public spay and neuter clinic was killed over costs and objections from veterinarians, who didn’t want to compete with the county. But she helped convince 21 veterinarian clinics to lower their sterilization costs for the poor.
Sinclair’s biggest accomplishment has been as a diplomat standing between defensive pet owners and angry neighbors who didn’t like the canine calling cards left on their lawns. Her office received 36,000 calls last year, many in the middle of the night.
Animal control is an emotional business. Some pet owners, she says, would rather her take their children than their animals.
“I’ve been good at resolution for them,” Sinclair says. “You have to thicken your skin. If I listened to everything they called me, I’d have gotten out of the business a long time ago.”
When riot-geared cops want to search a vacant, suspected drug house with a canine alarm system, Sinclair goes in first. Last New Year’s Eve, she tangled with a 115-pound Rottweiler and was bitten on the arm.
“I’m thinking, ‘Hey, I’m not paid enough for this. I’ve got 12 cops behind me in flak jackets and they want me to go in first.”’
Even more frightening than vicious animals are their owners, says Sinclair, who has seen a surge in violence. One of her female officers was punched in the face by a female pet owner the other day, she says.
“I’m afraid for my staff. Eighty percent of animal control officers are women,” she says. “But women are very successful in this business. They’re good at defusing situations. Men are more confrontational.”
Men also are more difficult to discuss sterilization with, particularly if they own male dogs, Sinclair says. “Men personify their dogs,” she says. When she mentions the n-word, as in neuter, many moan and cover their crotches.
Sinclair’s only regrets have been every fourth Wednesday, when it’s her turn to lethally inject healthy animals and then feed their carcasses into a crematorium. She tosses and turns many Tuesday nights just thinking about the incinerator, which she calls “Dachau,” after the German concentration camp.
Animal control workers rotate the duty weekly.
“My last one was last week,” Sinclair says. “I’ll be gone before they get to me again. I hate having to kill healthy excess animals because people won’t spay or neuter them.”
Sinclair will be missed as a friend by former County Commissioner Pat Mummey. The animal control director’s annual budget pitch always was the most entertaining, Mummey says.
Budget hearings usually are around Halloween, so Sinclair would don a costume and then head to the commissioners’ office. One year she dressed as a black cat with skin-tight leotards, a tail and whiskers.
“She has a crazy sense of humor,” Mummey says. “She’s a great problem-solver.”
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