Troy has no official animal control entity
Should you have a stray, aggressive dog on your property in Troy, a call to dispatch may yield little result. Since the last City Council rewrote the codes, an animal control officer is no longer part of the budget.
“We have no boarding for animals” said deputy clerk Sandi Sullivan. “The police officers will pick up an animal, but if they get called to a job, they have to drop the animal off wherever they are before going to the call out.”
In the meantime Deborah Rogers, owner of Debbie’s Pet Grooming in Troy, is boarding stray animals for the city. “We pay her,” Sullivan said, “but she’s doing it without a contract.”
Rogers was the animal control officer for the six years prior to 2000 and said, “A lot of people think we don’t need animal control, but there’s a need for it.”
Rogers explains that she was not paid full-time during her employment with the city, but paid for 24 hours a week and was on call 24/7. Call-outs paid extra. Rogers said she used her time in the position to go to the Troy schools and educate “to cut back on unwanted kittens and puppies. We had to educate kids about spaying and neutering.”
She continued: “When you spay or neuter your animal, you better enable them to be part of the family, and they do live longer and generally healthier lives.”
Rogers said she sees a lack of holding facilities as the biggest problem for the city, compounded by “the broken bond between the city of Troy and Lincoln County. If animals are found outside Troy city limits, they can go to Libby, but within city limits, Libby is saying that Troy needs to deal with it.”
Stray animals are required to be held for three working days to give owners a chance to claim them before being transferred to the pound.
She remembers her 12 dog runs being full at times during her stint in animal control, adding “it was a different time, with the mine running and more people in town, but there is still a need.”
Local James Peden, who believes in treating animals with compassion and has recently sold a successful vegan pet food business said, “It’s not really Debbie’s responsibility, is it?” He suggested that the city could get around the expense of hiring a full-time animal-control officer by having a volunteer team that is trained to handle scared and aggressive animals.
Local business owner Shelly Warrick, of the Silver Spur, said there is a cat problem in the neighborhood of her restaurant. She sees “10-12 cats living in the burned building next door” and wishes it could be demolished “and they can take the cats.”
But council member Dallas Carr said that the issue is not on the council’s radar. “In the three years I’ve been on the council, it has not come up. It was a previous council’s decision and as I understand it, if we have a problem, the police deal with it.”