Even after 31 years at East Haven Animal Control, it was not easy for former East Haven Animal Control Chief Owen Little to make a definitive departure. Despite stepping down as chief, Owen is only semi-retired.

“I actually love doing this job; I still love it,” Owen says. “I kind of hit a little bit of lotto or a jackpot. It’s four hours a night and three hours on Fridays. Not a bad gig.”

Owen stepped down from his leadership role at Animal Control in January, with Emily Higgins taking the reins of the department. He welcomes the new era for the department and its shelter and is looking to stay for a few more years, at the least.

“It was time for somebody to take my place, and I just thought now was the time, but it was still [about] keeping my finger in here,” he says.

Being an animal control officer and working at a shelter can be emotionally difficult for some. The first step is having compassion for the animals; then it’s to tap into his instinct as a craftsman to visualize the big picture of a mistreated animal’s condition and paint a new, better portrait for that animal’s life. Throughout his career, Owen, a former painter, has seen many inconceivably heinous animal cruelty and neglect incidents.

“We have a couple dogs in here now that are really emaciated, and as time goes on, I’ll say three months, when that dog walks out and is healthy, I get to make that difference,” he says.

Owen has painted a better life for owners as well. He has secured individuals looking specifically for therapy and service canines of rescue status and returned lost dogs to worried owners.

“It sounds like something out of the Waltons mixed in with Disney World, but at the end of the day, I can come knock on your door and say, ‘Hey dude, I’ve got your dog back for you,’” he says. “That cliche, ‘saving that dog won’t make the difference in the world, but it will make a whole difference for that dog, or that person’ — I heard that years ago, and to me, I found every day you should say it. I found more days than not very rewarding.”

Owen’s paintbrush for compassionate change translated to be a force for infrastructural change at the shelter. Using his past experience as a part-time real estate flipper, his craftsmanship came in handy again to construct new additions to the shelter for a safer and warmer environment.

“I jackhammered out the kennel’s [former] floors, and I put heated floors in,” he says. “In the summertime, we can cycle cold water through, so it cools off. At night, when [the dogs] go home, I turn on classical music and they get to listen to that.”

In their hammock beds, dogs receive radiated heat from the floors, so they can continue to stay warm as they drift off into slumber.

“I was able to make this place comfortable for them,” he says. “I made this place like I wanted for my own dog. They’re happy; that’s the trick.”

Turning to the shelter’s cats, Owen, with the help of town financial support, took what used to be a garage and “bricked up the back” and installed heat and air-conditioning, and it is now where the felines reside. They also get the chance to roam freely in a room to socialize (the best they can) with each other, taking time to get outside of their stainless steel cages, which Owen also worked to get for them.

“It’s bare-basic stuff that everybody wants: a warm bed to sleep in, a clean food bowl to eat out of. Just be nice.”

Making a difference in the name of public safety is another major aspect for Owen, where transforming the physical and mental state of a dog and thinking about the owner collides. He considers a particularly aggressive husky that is currently at the shelter.

“If we’re to put that dog out there right now, at your house, you’d be calling me up, ‘Why did you put that dog [in my house]? When they get out of my car, I’m panicking that the dog is going to break loose.’ You have to recondition that dog, find somewhere for that dog, find somebody that knows how to handle that dog; otherwise, that dog is going to hurt someone.”

Change for the better is the overarching goal for Owen and the rest of Animal Control. In pursuing any shift at the shelter, whether it be infrastructural improvements or operational methods, Owen perceives it as futile to leverage his seniority and breadth of experiences to keep performing tasks the same way he learned and developed upon them, especially with new leadership.

“I think it’s silly for folks like me to dig in and say, ‘I’ve been here for 30 years; this is the way it’s done.’ As long as we get to the same spot, [we don’t] care how we do it,” he says. “We just got new monitors; we have new computers coming in, [and] now we have laptops to be installed in a car. That’s a new trend of thought, so it’s always good to be open-minded.”

Reflecting on his time at Animal Control, Owen couldn’t be more thankful for the support of the Town of East Haven and its community, who have supported him and the mission of animal control in sheltering stray or abused animals and finding them homes to live out a healthy and happy life.

“I can’t stress this enough: the Town of East Haven…they supported me. The town has always been ‘pro’ with the animal shelter. As far as supporting me with fundraisers, with what we do, in good times and in bad times, I’ve been very lucky that the residents have always come to rally when we needed them. This past summer, we took 26 cats out of a resident’s home. Not a hoarder situation. And the residents just came out [and said], ‘What do you need? You want cat litter? We’ll get this!’ It’s a phenomenal town to work for.”

Last but not least, he is especially grateful for his wife, who he met through shared professions at an animal hospital, the kind of place where she still works. Because of similar jobs, she understands the struggles that can arise at the shelter.

“We’re both animal people, so it’s very fortunate.”