Perched on a wall above Clifford “Cliff” Bennett’s work desk is a faded photo of him and his former companion, Dodger. The picture shows a younger Bennett sporting the same iconic mustache he wears today “on the wrong side of 65,” but Dodger’s graying muzzle leaves one to think the spaniel was likely in its senior years.

The duo is the classic image of “man’s best friend.”

“I’ve always been a Brittany guy,” Bennett said, nodding to the photo. “Everyone has their type of dog and mine has always been these spaniels.”

These days, Dodger has been replaced by yet another dog named Shamus — the latest in a long line of Bennett’s Brittanys that have each offered him unique friendships throughout the years. Although Bennett’s fondness for animals is tangible upon meeting him, he never thought he would one day work in an animal shelter.

“This position opened up and evidently there was a particularly thin pool of candidates that day,” Bennett joked. “But here I am all these years later and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

January marked Bennett’s one decade working as director of the Flathead County Animal Shelter. And although the position was an unexpected turn for him, there were plenty of moments leading up to 2010 that prepared him for his 10 years as director.

Bennett is a fifth-generation rice farmer from California. He grew up learning the trade from his grandfather and father on a farm outside of Sacramento.

As an addition to his rural upbringing, Bennett said one year he talked his parents, Pinky and Glad, into letting him purchase a pair of horses named Buck and George. Between becoming a horse owner and putting in hours at a nearby dairy farm, Bennett adopted, and learned to appreciate, the role of an animal caretaker.

“It teaches you that animals do not take days off,” Bennett said. “Just like we have staff here at the shelter 365 days a year, they kept their farm animals going the same way.”

HIS APPRECIATION for animals continued into his adult years, starting with Chico State University, where he received a degree in agriculture studies — a major that allowed him to study animal science. With Bennett’s degree, he was poised to remain in rural Sacramento and raise the next generation of farmers.

It wasn’t until the early 1990s when his wife, Jane, decided the couple should raise their two sons, Scott and Jim, in a less rural area to “increase their potential of going to college.” That’s when Jane suggested the family move to the Flathead Valley — an area Bennett and her had fallen in love with in the ’70s.

“I told my wife one year I wanted to take her to a place I had always wanted to go back to since I was a kid,” Bennett said. “When I was a kid my parents took me to Flathead Lake. It was in the ’60s and no one was there. I remember asking, ‘dad is this what Tahoe looked in the ’40s?’”

Jane loved Flathead Lake just as much as Cliff and the two dreamed of one day moving there, which the family officially did in 1992. They settled into a large log cabin in Lakeside where Cliff and Jane still live.

Bennett traveled back and forth from Montana to Sacramento for a few years afterward, helping with the rice harvest until a company put in an offer on the land. The farm, Bennett says, has since been swallowed up by Sacramento.

THE NEXT 15 or so years of Bennett’s life felt a bit like a whirlwind.

He worked in economic development for a stint, coached Little League and Pee Wee soccer and was, in his word, “a miserable banker” at one point. One highlight, he said, began in 2004 when he and a partner started California’s first wild rice processing plant called The Wild Rice Exchange, which had more than 100 employees on its payroll at the height of his ownership. The exchange is still standing and, according to Bennett, is successful.

Erecting the company expanded Bennett’s skill sets as a businessman and a leader — two qualities that mesh nicely with his farming background and set him up for later success as director of the shelter.

He came into his current position at a time when the shelter was overrun with animals, many of them in tight or inconvenient spaces such as hallways and bathrooms. Records show more than 2,200 cats and dogs were brought into the shelter in 2010. The euthanization rate for cats was nearly triple what it is today and the rate for dogs was more than double.

The situation in 2010 — although in need of improvement — was a far cry from the original county shelter that was stationed at the Flathead County Landfill from 1983 into the early ’90s.

“It was convenient,” Bennett said. “They were euthanizing so many cats and dogs the landfill served as a nearby burial area.”

The shelter eventually moved to its current location off Cemetery Road in Kalispell, and the Flathead City-County Health Department many years ago took over oversight of the facility.

“The county has a real commitment with our shelter, while most areas unfortunately don’t. We’re lucky in that sense and grateful,” he said.

During Bennett’s decade as director, the shelter has expanded significantly.

The building has grown to include, among other things, a state-of-the-art veterinary area for on-site care, several meet-and-greet areas and facility’s front entrance and fencing is scheduled for an upgrade this summer. Kennels and holding spaces for cats and dogs have grown to include what he described as “personal patios” and “private bathrooms” — expansions the animals are visibly grateful for.

“Sheltering has become more of a science, not an art,” Bennett said. “When a dog or cat looks and feels happier and is interacting with people that come in, people are more likely to adopt them.”

In 2019, the shelter brought in about 1,400 cats and dogs and nearly 90% of these were adopted or claimed by their owners. Cats stayed at the shelter for an average of 17.8 days and dogs for 7.5 days — figures that are far below both state and national averages.

Only 40 of the animals brought in last year were euthanized.

Bennett credits the shelter staff, generous donors and the county’s support for the facility’s success.

“I couldn’t have done this without any of them,” Bennett said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Reporter Kianna Gardner can be reached at 758-4407 or kgardner@dailyinterlake.com