Animal Control Officers Pursue Dogs Preying on Sheep : Livestock: One pack member, possibly a pet, escapes posse despite airborne assistance. Damage toll runs into thousands of dollars.

It was hours before dawn Friday, but animal control officers were already assembled--weary, but armed and game to do battle.

Many had managed just a few hours of sleep since Monday, frustrated in their efforts to hunt down a pack of dogs that had killed dozens of local sheep. By week’s end, the trail had gone cold--three of the dogs had eluded captors for days, blending into the desert darkness at night, hiding in the dense underbrush during the day.

“Why don’t we just napalm them?” one official quipped early Friday. For the next seven hours, he and a posse of Los Angeles County animal control officers and local ranchers waited for a glimpse of the dogs that have been terrorizing livestock in this part of the north Antelope Valley.

By midmorning, they finally got a break. Two of the culprits were spotted with the help of airborne reconnaissance.

A fleet of all-terrain vehicles and trucks took up the chase through the desert near Rosamond, trailing the fleeing canines as they ran toward Kern County. Overhead, the plane kept track of the dogs, and the hunters believed they were finally at the end of the chase.

That turned out to be partially true: One of the marauding dogs was killed and another was captured, but the third--a German shepherd-pit bull mix--apparently escaped.

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Before Friday’s drama, the dogs had struck at least three times in a week. Stakeouts by ranch hands and animal control officers had failed to foil the dogs, who had slaughtered more than 30 lambs, worth thousands of dollars. By sundown Thursday, workers at Eugene Nebeker’s ranch had begun patrolling the pens in trucks.

At 3:30 a.m. Friday, the animal control officers shuffled into their headquarters, just a few miles from the ranch. They hopped into trucks in teams of two and drove to surveillance points along the mostly dirt roads nearby.

To reach the sheep pens, the dogs would have to leave their desert camouflage and dart across the roads.

“It’s just a waiting game,” said Officer Michael Wilson of the county Department of Animal Care and Control.

As daylight came, officers and ranchers drove around trying, with little success, to flush out the dogs.

The hunt changed when Michael Lamb drove up in his pickup and asked, “Why wasn’t I invited to this hunt?” Officer Leslie Troncale, Lamb’s neighbor, smiled, saying, “He has a plane .”

A few minutes later, Lamb was airborne, radioing observations to the ground forces.

The hunters learned that the dogs had struck again near dawn--at another ranch further north--killing several goats. The chase moved toward the Kern County line, where the hunters met Kern County animal control officers who were also pursuing the dogs.

As if on cue, the group got word that a homeowner just north of the county line reported seeing three dogs running from her property, carrying a chicken. Dirt and tumbleweeds flew when the hunters sped off, crisscrossing riverbeds and ditches as the dogs scattered.

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The smallest dog, a black terrier, was killed when it dashed in front of a pickup and was run over. Another, a tan German shepherd mix, dived into a drainpipe to hide, but the exit was blocked by officers, who crawled in, retrieved the whimpering dog and tossed it in the lockup. The third dog’s escape left officers unsure about the likelihood of further attacks.

“It looks like we got his gang, but we didn’t get the leader,” Cramer said. The remaining dog, he said, “may or may not be active. Once they lose their pack, their psychology changes.”

The hunters say they saw a collar on the fleeing dog. That was just what rancher Nebeker had expected. Last week his crews shot three other domestic dogs that had attacked his livestock. He was fuming that a pet owner’s carelessness had cost him tens of thousands of dollars worth of livestock.

“About two-thirds of our business has come to a screeching halt,” he said. “I’m just absolutely fed up with this situation, and I’m not going to rest until it’s better controlled. The custom up here with too many people is just to let their dogs run free.”