The Animal Control Officer is the local animal care and control professional. This person helps the public deal with problems caused by animals. This person also works with other local agencies, such as social services and law enforcement, to protect all members of families, both two-legged and four-legged.

Long gone is the term "dogcatcher" and the image of a man with a butterfly net. Animal care and control professionals now perform a variety of services that help animals as well as people, these services include:

• Rescuing injured animals
• Controlling stray and potentially dangerous animals roaming at large
• Bringing lost pets to an animal shelter where their owners can reclaim them

The Animal Control Officer works to protect stray, injured, abused, and unwanted animals. This person has different job titles in different communities - animal control officer, animal services officer, humane officer, humane investigator, animal warden - but is the one who responds to calls about neglected or lost animals, and often the first person to provide comfort and compassion to animals in need.

How You Can Help

Here are a few ways you can help your local animal control program help people and animals:

• Provide for your pet's safety. Keep a collar and identification tags on your pet at all times and ensure that your pet is always properly supervised or safely confined when you're not home. Spay or neuter you pet and keep him or her current on all necessary vaccinations, especially the vaccination for rabies
• Encourage local government officials to support the animal control program: it is one of our community's life-saving services. Urge officials to take crimes against animals seriously and to advance pro-animal legislation. Support efforts to enact and enforce pro-animal ordinances.
• Support your local animal control program. We need funds to serve the community effectively, to train and equip our staff, and to secure vehicles to transport animals safely and comfortably. We can't fulfill our mission without your help.

Pets in the Community

Wellesley, Massachusetts is a suburb of Boston, with approximately 26,000 residents. Also residing in Wellesley are over 2,700 dogs, 3,000 or more cats, as well as ferrets, rabbits, goats, horses, cows, sheep and reptiles. The purpose of this page is to inform residents of their responsibilities as pet owners, as well as to educate the general public about the local wildlife.

We hope for this page to become a valuable resource for all residents of Wellesley. If you have a specific question that is not answered within these pages, please do not hesitate to contact us at 781-235-8460.