Mobley decides to chase new things

By Lois Mittino Gray

At age 91, Chuck Mobley feels it’s time to hang up the leash on his job as Posey County’s Animal Control Officer. The spry senior said it is getting harder to wrangle the big dogs at his age. “If one of them gets wrapped around me on the leash, it gets harder to keep my balance and I don’t want to end up being on the ground,” he explained of his decision to retire as soon as his replacement is hired. “I’m ready to go,” he said with an easy grin.

Chuck Mobley has been the County’s main domestic animal man for almost 18 years. He started in February, 2008 after his wife, Ruth Ellen, died in 2007. “I retired from working at the Farm Bureau Refinery in 1996 and was just doing odd jobs and things around the house. But after she passed, I needed something to get me out of the house and on with my life and took this position,” he recalled.

Chuck is already on his third new animal control vehicle in his years on the job. “It already has over 50,000 miles on it. This county is really big and I drive to all parts of it in my work. There’s a lot of driving involved.” He transports lost, injured, and abandoned dogs to the local shelter and county kennels, cares for the cats, handles horses and other hoofed mammals, and even catches a snake every once in a while for a terrified homeowner. “They are almost always non-venomous, so I catch them in a bag and take them away to another location and let them go.”

He has to be careful with the animals, especially on drug busts, when many dogs are trained to attack any person in uniform. “I did have to go to the hospital two years ago after a bust when I was leading a dog down steps on a leash and it turned toward my face. My hand was pretty ripped up from bites,” he said.

Chuck has enjoyed his job, most of the time, especially working with the animals. It’s the inhumane acts by some people that get him going. “I have had to take 100 dogs out of a house in Griffin with dead dog bodies mixed in with all of them. The worst was finding five dogs dead in Wadesville in separate cages in a house just totally abandoned. They were left to die there when the resident moved out. He could have just let them loose in the house so someone could find them looking out the window and save them. But to deliberately lock them up to die slowly with no food or water? I don’t understand how someone could do that. Why didn’t they just call me? I would have picked them up and taken them to the kennel,” he remarked, still obviously moved by the sad scene.

In his retirement, the Poseyville native plans to garden and work in his yard around his home. He lives right across the Keck Bypass outside of Mount Vernon with his own two ‘Bullies’ dogs to look after. He has three daughters and three deceased sons and a total of nine grandchildren to keep him busy.

This dedicated animal lover has agreed to work in his present position until a replacement is found. The Posey County Commissioners are now accepting resumes for the position of Full-Time Animal Control Officer. Resumes must be submitted no later than Friday, January 16. They may be delivered in person or mailed to the County Auditor’s Office at 126 East Third Street, Room 220, Mount Vernon, IN. 47620. They may be emailed to maegen.greenwell@poseycountyin.gov. Please do not apply via Facebook. Applications submitted through Facebook will not be considered.

If you would like to talk with Mobley about the job requirements or about an animal situation, it is easiest to leave a message for him to call you with the Posey County Dispatch at 812-838-1320.