Legal Question in Administrative Law in California

You should contact the Animal Control agency in the community where you live. There should be a formal written procedure available for your review.

County Animal Control should be a good source of information....they may not make the rules and procedures, but they certainly have to know them. I would expect the rules to walk a fine line between pet owners' property rights and the difficulty, in some cases, of finding the owner (if any) of a stray or determining whether the dog has an owner in a timely fashion to protect public health and safety.