An animal control officer (also, more informally: dog catcher or dog warden or ) is an employee of, or a contractor to, a municipality, charged with catching stray or loose dogs, cats, and sometimes other animals, and bringing them to a compound or animal shelter, where the animals are held for a certain time before being returned to their owners, put up for adoption, or euthanized. Animal control departments are also responsible for investigating incidents of human contact with both wild and domestic animals, such as bites. They usually work with Health Departments to ensure the health of humans injured by animals. Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... A contractor is in a legal sense one who enters into a binding agreement to perform a certain service or provide a certain product in exchange for valuable consideration, monetary, goods,services, even barter arrangements. ... A municipality or general-purpose district (compare with: special-purpose district) is an administrative local area generally composed of a clearly defined territory and commonly referring to a city, town, or village government. ... Jump to: navigation, search Trinomial name Canis lupus familiaris (Linnaeus, 1758) The dog is a canine carnivorous mammal that has been domesticated for at least 14,000 years and perhaps for as long as 150,000 years based on recent evidence. ... Trinomial name Felis silvestris catus (Linnaeus, 1758) This article is about the domestic cat. ... Animal shelters, or what used to be known as pounds or dog pounds, are either governmental or private organizations that provide temporary homes for stray, surrendered, or abandoned pet animals. ... Jump to: navigation, search Adoption is the legal act of permanently placing a child with a parent or parents other than the birth parents. ... Euthanasia (Greek: ευθανασία, good death) is the practice of killing a person or animal, in a painless or minimally painful way, for merciful reasons, usually to end their suffering. ... A health department is a part of government which focuses on issues related to the general health of the citizenry. ...

Variations of the historical phrase "I wouldn't vote for him for dogcatcher" or "He couldn't run for dogcatcher in this county" refers to an individual so poorly regarded that the individual in question is not fit to be elected to even a trivial position of public trust. In actuality, this position is usually an appointed one in localities that have a dedicated full-time animal control officer.