An annoying Chihuahua. A routine checkup. A basketball score. Misplaced “dope.”

These are not reasons to call 911.

But emergency responders are being strained by inappropriate calls to 911 and ambulance runs, a Cox Media Group Ohio investigation has found.

In 2010, Butler County dispatchers answered 47,500 calls to 911, according to Communications Manager Bonnie Short.

Most of those calls were from frantic people who needed help or had witnessed an incident where someone needs assistance.

“But not always,” Short said. “We get called here asking when Trick or Treat is. Or what the weather is like outside and if whey should be driving.”

The calls can be exasperating for busy dispatchers, but they have learned how to efficiently answer and dispose of calls that are not emergencies, said Chief Deputy Anthony Dwyer.

“And they do it quite well,” he said.

In 2010, there were 9,010 EMS calls in Hamilton and 8,078 in Middletown. The runs for each call are costly for each city because an ambulance run costs between $309 and $1,060.

“One person may perceive an incident to be a major problem where another individual may see that same problem as nothing much at all,” said Hamilton police officer Andrew Beckelhymer.

But blatant abuse is not tolerated. This year, Hamilton police have charged one person with making false alarms for calling 911 and reporting a false restaurant robbery.

“They called and reported Richards Pizza had been robbed,” Beckelhymer said. But in addition to the cost to taxpayers, there is a danger that medics on an errant call won’t get to a real life-or-death emergency in time. Each time EMTs transport someone to the hospital — even for minor ailments — it puts a medic out of service for about an hour, officials said.

Hamilton dispatchers answered 65,823 911 calls in 2010. Beckelhymer said sometimes calls that may not seem like an emergency actually are.

“We had a man call 911 to ask us to open his windows,” Beckelhymer said. As dispatchers continue to talk with the man, they realized there may be a greater issue at play.

When officers arrived, they found the man was incapacitated and had not been able to get out of his recliner for days, he said.

“They man really did need help,” Beckelhymer said.

The National Academies of Emergency Dispatch estimate that 20 percent of all 911 calls are not life-threatening, according to NAED co-founder Jeff Clawson.

These calls still require some sort of response, the NAED is careful to add. About 13 percent need medical transport — for such things as burns to less than 18 percent of the body, a broken knee or maybe a seizure — but not a paramedic. Another 6 or 7 percent would be better served by a nurse help-line or social service agency, Clawson said.

“Most 911 system administrators still believe it is ‘un-American’ not to respond, and, more than not, continue to over respond,” he said in a prepared statement.

“We try to err on the side of leniency,” Dwyer said. “Most of the time it is not intentional.”

Short said one call that stands out for her is a man who called 911 to get someone to rid his house of a mouse.

“His wife called him at work and she was terrified, so he called 911,” Short said. She added the definition of an emergency is not the same for everyone.

Sorting through real emergency calls when answering 911 is a skill Middletown dispatchers have mastered. For them it is part of the job, said Shelley Meehan, communications supervisor.

In 2010, Middletown dispatchers answered 43,271 911 calls, of those 30,818 were from wireless sources.

In the past year, Meehan said a handful of 911 abusers have been charged.

Some of the most memorable and amusing calls include a call from a man wanting police because “someone stole my dope.”

And a man who called day after day because a rooster was waking him up every morning. The humane officer responded daily looking for a rooster in the neighborhood. Eventually, the case was solved.

Meehan said the caller was blind and his daughter had purchased an alarm clock for him that crowed like a rooster.

Cab instead of ambulance

At the forefront of rethinking EMS services is Louisville, Ky., according to NAED.

Instead of a $475 ride to an expensive emergency room, some 911 callers in that city get a $27 ride from a private transport company to a local urgent care clinic.

“When someone calls 911, we triage through a medical program to try to ascertain what’s wrong with the person, what level of response they need,” said Mindy Glenn of MetroSafe, the city’s dispatching agency.

Non-emergency calls can go to a nurse who can counsel the caller on what to do and sometimes help them set up a doctor’s appointment.

Some calls are transferred to the city’s social services or government help-line.

Neal Richmond, chief executive officer of the Louisville EMS division, said the triage system was set up last year to save money and keep ambulances ready to respond to real life-or-death emergencies. “Everybody’s been doing business as usual and I don’t think we can do it any longer that way,” he said.

This system has long been used in other countries, but this is only one of two U.S. cities attempting it, according to NAED.