Animal Control rescues 36 dogs

For Elizabeth Lopez-Calderon, the story of her many dogs really begins with the death of her husband five years ago.

In his absence, the dogs gave her something to care for, to love.

Eventually, she took in at least 36 dogs, including a blind geriatric terrier. And one cat.

“They were my fur babies,” she said standing in front of her condemned home in Catheys Valley, tears streaming down her cheeks.

It was an awful lot to love.

Maybe too much.

On March 17, Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office Animal Control rescued those 36 dogs and one cat, from an “unsanitary home” at 2679 Highway 140, near the Oasis Market in Catheys Valley.

The sheriff’s office called it one of the worst animal hoarding cases they have encountered in recent years.

Deputies arrested Lopez-Calderon, 56, and she was charged last week with felony animal cruelty and a misdemeanor charge of failure to care for an animal.

She has pleaded not guilty and was placed on supervised release.

A total of 34 dogs were taken in by two rescue operations.

One dog and one cat were euthanized due to “poor health and advanced age.” Another dog is in quarantine because it bit an Animal Control Officer.

Too many dogs?

Asked if she had too many animals, Lopez Calderon demurred.

“Well, I won’t say a lot. They’re not a lot to me,” she said.

“I didn’t look at them as a number.”

“When my husband died, I lost my best friend of 30 years. I isolated myself for two years in that house. I didn’t come out.”

“They helped me get up every day because they needed to eat, have water and go outside,” she said.

For the most part, she said, her dogs stayed inside the home as well as in a shed within a small yard area outside.

She believes her dogs could even sense when she was about to have a seizure.

Most of the dogs removed were terrier mixes, with a few Chihuahua and poodle mixes.

She is especially worried about Puffy, her blind terrier, who is more than 20 years old. She believes he’ll be frightened if he doesn’t hear the sound of her voice.

Ever since her husband died, he wouldn’t leave her side.

“They were part of my family,” she said.

On the radar

The home, located within the Porta Yosemite mobile home park has been on Animal Control’s radar since September 2025, when it received a report about “many, many” dogs locked inside the home and living in unsanitary conditions.

Officers attempted to assist Lopez-Calderon over the next six months by repeatedly offering resources like rabies clinics, area rescues and spay and neuter options, a sheriff’s spokesperson said.

In October, Animal Control Officers provided information about vaccination requirements, and left multiple “door hangers” asking for a call back.

In December, Animal Control officers said they made several appointments with Lopez-Calderon to do a welfare check on the dogs, but she kept rescheduling those appointments.

In February, animal control officers left information at the door about upcoming rabies clinics and the need to spay and neuter the animals.

The “suspect remained elusive for about a month” and “all passive efforts to investigate and intervene had been exhausted,” according to a sheriff’s office spokesperson.

‘Zombie dogs’?

Lopez-Calderon gave a very different narrative of the last few months.

It began, she said, when Animal Control Officers told her there was a complaint that her dogs were eating one another because of malnutrition.

“And I said, ‘Oh, so what, I have zombie dogs?’ And she didn’t like my response,” said Lopez-Calderon of the Animal Control Officer.

Lopez-Calderon pointed to a 44-pound bag of dog food on her porch and shrugged, “Yeah, I don’t think they were eating each other.”

“They didn’t offer anything except threats. Threats of going to jail if I don’t let them do what they want to do,” she said of Animal Control.

Lopez-Calderon refused to allow officers inside her home because they didn’t have a search warrant.

On March 16, Lopez-Calderon said Animal Control officers arrived and asked her to bring the dogs out one-by-one to be photographed, in what she sarcastically called a “doggy fashion show.”

She believes those photos were used to obtain a search warrant for her home, which was served the next day, March 17.

The Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office posted pictures inside her home on Facebook that Lopez-Calderon believes were intended to make her home look like a shambles.

She said two mattresses that were outside were moved inside her home.

“Even if I choose to have a dirty house, is that a crime?” she asked rhetorically. Last weekend, bright red condemned signs that say, “DO NOT ENTER, UNSAFE TO OCCUPY,” remain plastered on the door and the front of her home.

A manager for the park said even before the raid, he didn’t believe the home had electricity.

Pet permit redux

The case is likely to renew the bitter debate over some kind of a multiple pet permit in Mariposa County.

In September, after five somewhat contentious hearings, the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance requiring a permit for residences with more than 10 dogs over six months old.

The ordinance had exemptions for boarding facilities, rescues and agricultural producers.

But the ordinance also contained a provision allowing for an inspection of those properties without a search warrant.

That ignited privacy concerns and led to a successful petition drive in October that gathered more than 970 signatures to place the issue on the ballot in a special election.

But rather than put the ordinance to a recall vote in a special election, the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors voted in December to rescind the ordinance.

There have been conversations since about making it a registration, rather than a permit, and creating more educational opportunities, instead of penalties.

But the controversy may have left political scar tissue, with county supervisors wary of an electorate that may have sent a clear message already with a successful countywide petition drive.