Abused, Abandoned And All In A Day's Work

City Animal Control Officer Has Hands Full In An Often 'Heart-wrenching' Job

Here is Ricky Martin's to-do list:

"Need to pick up injured cat from fire."

"Dog bit two family members."

"Stray cats and kittens on porch of vacant property and living in boxes without roof or water."

"A German shepherd puppy is being kept in a cage too small for him and can't stand up."

"Owner moved out and left animal on the street."

"Citizen walked by and saw ribs on a dog."

Ricky Martin is an animal control officer with the Baltimore health department, and this list is a fraction of complaints he investigated all over the city Thursday.

In just a few hours, he waded through shoulder-high weeds, over vacant lots covered with broken glass and into dingy rowhouses. Along the way, he chased down an errant dog, seized another dog the owner didn't want and rescued a stray cat that found its way into the Social Security Administration building on Greene Street.

He's been doing this for nine years and is unfazed by the horrific ways people mistreat their pets, though he acknowledged that he was shaken to return from vacation this week to learn that someone had doused a pit bull with gasoline and set it on fire on Presbury Street in West Baltimore.

The dog, nicknamed Phoenix, had to be euthanized; the reward for an arrest and conviction of its attackers has now climbed to $23,000. Perhaps because animals are so vulnerable and by nature innocent, attacks on them resonate in ways that don't when people are involved. Or perhaps the reason can be found on the sign that hangs inside the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter: "People who are violent to animals rarely stop there."

Said Martin: "It's heart-wrenching what we see out here."

His first stop was on Patterson Park Avenue. A woman had complained that a man's two pit bulls had bitten her two cocker spaniels and "tore off hunks of flesh." The owner of the pit bulls, Wesley Sanders, had previously been cited for not having a license, rabies shots and shelter for the dogs, but his paperwork was largely up to date when Martin visited.

"I went and did all those things," Sanders said, holding both his pit bulls, one named Savage, while standing on his front steps. "Now they come back and said some lady around the corner said that my dogs attack both of her dogs. I don't have no knowledge of that."

Martin leaned over and let the pit bulls lick his hand. "Nice dogs," he told Sanders, adding that the allegation would be investigated further.