After 30 years serving Douglas County as an animal control officer, Nancee Goldwater is hanging up her dog leash but she'll still be a familiar face at the shelter on Pinenut Road.
She plans to join Douglas Animal Welfare Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping care for and find new homes for animals brought to the shelter.
"Now I'll get to do things that as an officer I had no time to do," she said. "Like walking the animals and playing with them."
Goldwater, a native of Berkeley, Calif., attended high school and college in the Bay area before she moved here in October of 1972. She soon became a volunteer at the shelter and with the Wild Animal Infirmary of Nevada. She still works closely with WAIF and recently helped fellow members release a rehabilitated red-shouldered hawk back into the wild. The huge bird had been brought to WAIF near death.
Although she once considered studying to become a veterinarian, Goldwater, instead, opted in 1977 to apply as an animal control officer so she could work closely with animals more quickly.
"I never expected I'd last this long," she said during a break between assignments last week. "I didn't even have a driver's license."
Indeed, she rode to that job interview on horseback. She was hired, but told she would have to get a license.
"I've always had a passion for animals," she said, "Since I was 3 years old and climbing on the back of great Danes and riding them around like they were ponies."
Asked to recall a career highlight, she didn't hesitate. "This was heart-wrenching in a good way." she said; "Many years ago I picked up a white German shepherd at the Lake and her feet were all shredded...totally torn. She was such a sweet dog. She had an old, faded identification tag I was able to track to some people in Daly City, Calif."
She said the owners, nearly 200 miles away, had discovered the dog missing, possibly stolen, from their front yard almost four months earlier.
"A week before I called them, they had decided they'd never see her again and had gotten rid of all her food dishes (and other items.)"
Goldwater paused to wipe a tear of happiness, then continued the story.
"They came right up here and there was a reunion. The dog was jumping and happy. They were crying and I was crying."
Goldwater recalled another dog she had picked up shortly after a Christmas parade. "Frosty" had an old compound fracture of one leg.
"He was such a sweet dog but in extreme pain," she said.
A special fund for such emergencies had been set up and funds from that and from donations that poured in after a newspaper article about Frosty allowed her to get emergency medical treatment. The leg, however, could not be saved. It had to be amputated.
"Eventually she became a birthday present for a 13-year-old girl who could care less that he was handicapped," she recalled.
Goldwater has seen many changes in her 30 years as an animal control officer. The most important, she said, is the dramatic reduction of the number of animals euthanized. When she arrived, two thirds of the animals were put down. Today, it's fewer than five percent and all of those are animals that are extremely ill or injured or have records of multiple biting incidents.
Today, she said the Douglas County Animal Shelter's ration of adoptions and returns to owners is "by far the best record in the entire state."
"This has not been a job or a career," she said. "It has been a mission. I feel I have a special gift of communicating with animals. However, this gift also comes with responsibilities to help them. That is why I will continue to work not only with domestic animals at the shelter, but also with the wildlife rescue group WAIF I have volunteered with since 1977."
Goldwater's accomplishments were recently recognized by the Douglas County Board of Commissioners.
