Photo by Skip Lawrence Animal Control Officer Rachel McVey holds a stray cat she picked up and brought to the Frederick County Animal Control shelter. Her love of animals led her to leave a job as a courthouse security officer and become an animal control officer.

So when the opportunity arose to combine her two interests in September 2008, she jumped at the chance.

McVey left her job as a court security supervisor at the county courthouse to become an officer at the Frederick County Division of Animal Control.

"It's my dream job," said McVey, 35, of Fairfield, Pa.

"It allows me the chance to work in a law enforcement-type position while working with animals at the same time," she said.

McVey grew up around animals in the Damascus area.

An uncle was a veterinarian, and her father had a cat, Sapphire, who lived into her 20s.

"We always had animals," McVey said.

Married to Dan McVey, a regional loss prevention manager for CVS, McVey is mother to two boys, Conor, 4, and Charlie, 12, and stepmother to two girls, Kerry, 13, and Megan, 19.

The McVeys had two four-legged family members until recently: Belle, an 8-year-old yellow Labrador retriever, and Toby (as in country crooner Toby Keith), a black and tan coonhound.

Toby's issues with food aggression forced the family to make the difficult decision to put the animal down. They had adopted the dog over the summer.

"The sad thing is that other than this one behavioral issue, Toby was a great dog," McVey said. "My 4-year-old adored him, but we couldn't risk having one of the children getting hurt."

"These things happen," she said. "(Pet placements) don't always work out. But he had a good home while he was with us."

McVey isn't partial only to dogs. She's become fond of a pair of cats at the animal shelter, brothers Tigger and Storm.

"I'd love to bring them home, but my husband would kill me," she said with a laugh.

McVey's job at the shelter isn't her first exposure to animals outside the home.

She spent three years at the Montgomery County Humane Society in Rockville in the mid-1990s. Afterward, she worked nights at an emergency veterinary clinic in Catonsville until 2001, when she took the job at the courthouse.

One of the most difficult aspects of her current job is seeing what some pet owners do to their animals.

Faced with cases of cruelty or neglect, animal control officers are often required to try to educate pet owners about the error of their ways.

"We have to learn to shut our emotions off," McVey said. "It's not always easy."