A Pullman Police Department officer will head to special training to promote animal welfare after receiving a grant from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“It will just be more experience for me and how to handle these things better, I always have so many questions because every call is different,” said code enforcement officer Emily Johns, who is attending the training next week. “I think going to the academy will help with that a lot.”

According to a press release, the police department receives 800 animal-related calls per year.

Code enforcement officer Elizabeth Schaeffer, who attended the training last year, said many of the usual calls they receive are stray or unattended dogs, animal abuse, wildlife issues, noise complaints, vicious animals and people keeping exotic animals illegally. She said they often receive calls on cats, which are not regulated in Pullman.

“Even if you’re a pet person or an animal person, I find your magic doesn’t work on all the animals and you can’t get sad that they don’t like you,” Schaeffer said. “You just have to read the animals and go with it and be cautious, I don’t want to be the cause of an animal acting out and biting me and being labeled as a vicious animal, because that’s unfair.”

The training will go over animal behavior, cruelty law and protocols for dealing with vicious animals and exotic animals.

Schaeffer said the most important thing from the training is the connection to resources.

“It’s good to have a little bit of an idea in how to start with exotics and stuff like that or have people you can network with and have the resources to call because we can’t be an expert on every animal species,” Schaeffer said, “but we can get hooked up with good resources.”

The Pullman community is fortunate to have a vet school as a resource, she said. Often exotic animals or injured wildlife officers find are taken there for treatment.

“We have a place to take those when people call them in,” Schaeffer said. “Other communities don’t have access to a top-notch vet school that has staff and experience with stuff like that, a lot of times they are stuck with leaving the animal.”

“By enhancing the ability of Pullman’s ACO’s to identify and respond to cruelty and animal fighting, perpetrators of such acts stand a better chance of being punished, hopefully preventing them from further harming animals and acting as a deterrent to others who might do the same,” said Matt Stern, Senior Director, ASPCA Anti-Cruelty Group Operations.