The traditional animal control officer picks up a loose dog, writes a citation if the law requires one, and takes the animal to a shelter. A growing number of agencies are rethinking that sequence. In the model advocated by Best Friends Animal Society, the officer is a field services liaison: someone who still protects public safety, but who first looks for practical ways to keep the dog and the household together. That can mean finding the owner next door, connecting a family with food or a vet visit, or arranging a safe outcome that never involves a shelter cage.
This framing is an advocacy position, not a description of every agency. It is best understood through one well-documented municipal example, Memphis Animal Services, and through the professional literature that describes the same direction of travel.
What the field services role adds to the job
The enforcement and capture functions do not disappear under this model. Officers still respond to bites, aggressive animals, cruelty complaints and immediate hazards. What changes is the order of operations and the set of tools available. The ICMA-hosted article by Scott Giacoppo, who is identified there as National Shelter Liaison Director at Best Friends Animal Society, puts the shift this way:
“Similar to the community policing model that champions proactive problem-solving techniques, animal care and control services are now partnering with the public and other agencies to go beyond simply reacting to complaints, and instead using data and planning to implement long-term solutions with preventative measures.”
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Best Friends’ own page uses the shorthand “the field services liaison” for the same idea. Neither the Best Friends page nor the ICMA-hosted article shows a publication date, so both should be read as advocacy from a national organization rather than as freshly measured independent findings.
Four shifts in day-to-day practice
From automatic intake toward field reunification
In Memphis, the written protocol required officers to make reasonable efforts to reunite a loose dog with its owner in the neighborhood before transporting it. Those efforts included checking the animal’s identification, speaking with neighbors, and leaving a door hanger at the house if the dog still had to be transported. The practical effect is that an identified dog can go home the same day, without a shelter record, a holding period or a redemption fee.
From enforcement-first toward support
The model treats warnings and owner support as real alternatives to citations in some circumstances, not as a courtesy. The decision still depends on the facts: a dog that has bitten someone or a repeated, documented neglect case calls for a different response. For a first loose-dog event with a cooperative owner, a warning plus a connection to help is the design the field services approach favors.
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From complaint response toward prevention and collaboration
The ICMA-hosted article describes officers working with residents and other agencies to find the causes of recurring complaints and then planning around them. Its examples include community-cat programs and breed-neutral approaches to enforcement, which focus on the behavior of the animal and owner rather than the breed label. The aim is to reduce the number of calls over time, not just to close each one.
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In the Memphis example, the shelter remained one option among several. The agency combined managed intake, safety-net support, return-to-field for community cats, assistive field services, and streamlined adoption or transfer. Each pathway is a way to avoid unnecessary intake, which is why the approach is often described as bundling rather than replacing one tool.
What the Memphis case study shows
The most detailed evidence comes from a peer-reviewed observational study of Memphis Animal Services, dated 24 June 2022, published in Frontiers. It examines five bundled strategies introduced beginning in 2017 and tracks outcomes over time. The authors report the following medians, comparing the period before the intervention with the period after it:
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| Measure (Memphis Animal Services, study dated 24 June 2022) | Before intervention | After intervention |
|---|---|---|
| Median live-release rate, cats | 35% | 92% |
| Median live-release rate, dogs | 25% | 87% |
| Median live-release rate, kittens | 34% | 92% |
| Median share of kittens entering with euthanasia as outcome | 59% | 3% |
These are local, historical figures for one municipal shelter. Because five changes were made together, the numbers cannot show how much of the improvement came from the field-services role specifically, and they do not predict results in another city with different laws, staffing or housing stock.
The Pet Resource Center’s 2021 workload
Memphis also created a Pet Resource Center to deliver the support side of the model. In 2021 it handled 4,394 calls. The study categorizes them as follows:
| Call category (Memphis Pet Resource Center, 2021) | Calls | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Rehoming support | 1,419 | 32% |
| Pet food or supplies | 1,223 | 28% |
| Medical care | 860 | 20% |
| Other pet-retention matters | 854 | 19% |
| Behavior assistance | 38 | 1% |
The breakdown is useful for planning: most requests were about rehoming, food and medical needs rather than behavior. Behavior help was a small share of calls in that year, which suggests agencies should not assume a behavior team is the first thing residents need.
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The study also cites an earlier estimate that roughly 20 million animals entered shelters and 13.5 million were euthanized in the 1970s. That figure comes from the older source the study cites, not from the Memphis data, and it should be attributed that way.
Where the evidence stops
- The Memphis study is one city, observational, and bundles several changes. It supports the promise of the combined approach in that setting. It does not show that changing an officer’s job title, on its own, produces better outcomes.
- No comparative trial in the sources isolates the field services liaison label as a cause of improvement.
- No universal statutory definition of the animal control officer’s role was established in the sources. Local ordinances control what an officer may do, including whether warnings are permitted in a given case.
- No current national statistic on field reunification or shelter intake was verified. Readers should not generalize the Memphis numbers to the country as a whole.
Understanding “no-kill” as used in this debate
The ICMA-hosted article defines a no-kill community using a collective save-rate benchmark of 90% or more. It is an organizational benchmark, not a legal category. The article states that the label does not mean releasing dangerous animals or holding animals indefinitely. Best Friends Animal Society has described more than 400 communities as no-kill; its page is undated, so this should be treated as the organization’s own count rather than a current independent tally.
How to judge a local program
If you are a resident, a volunteer or a local official trying to assess whether your agency is moving in this direction, these questions separate substance from branding:
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- Intake: Does the agency have a managed or nonurgent intake option, or does every found animal go to the shelter?
- Reunification: Is there a written requirement to check identification, canvass neighbors and leave notice before transport?
- Citations: Are warnings and owner-support referrals a documented option for appropriate cases?
- Support: Is there a phone line or office that refers residents to food, veterinary care, behavior help or rehoming?
- Community cats: Is there a return-to-field pathway for healthy, unowned cats, and is it governed by local rules?
- Measurement: Does the agency publish intake, live-release and euthanasia figures by animal type and by year, with definitions?
For readers who want shelter-management detail beyond the articles cited here, the Memphis study credits Sara Pizano as the author of Best Practice Playbook for Animal Shelters. This article did not verify the book’s current availability or price.
The Bottom Line
The dogcatcher’s job is widening from capture to prevention, reunification and owner support, and the Memphis evidence suggests that combining these practices can change shelter outcomes in one city. The claim is strongest as a case for bundling practices, not as proof that a new job title or a single policy will reproduce those results.
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