Officials should be ashamed
The recent turn of events of the Warren County Humane Society closing its animal shelter is appalling.
Our county, our city, and its officials should be ashamed of this. Warren County has successfully taken another step backwards.
I live in the city and I would like to say we, too, have been plagued with the stray dog situation. Just recently we had two strays attack a neighbor’s dog and this isn’t the first time strays have run through our neighborhood causing havoc.
I think it’s safe to say every home in our neighborhood has an average of two pets per household. I’ll agree that spaying and neutering would be a great answer to helping a huge problem. But as everyone knows, not all people are as responsible as they should be.
I don’t know how well our shelter enforced this rule, but at other animal shelters where we adopted pets in the past, the animal shelter had a veterinarian who agreed to spay or neuter at a lower fee for adopted pets. The shelter would make the appointment for you at the time of adoption and you had to take the animal shelter a statement saying this service had been performed within 30 days of adoption or the shelter would come to your home and take the pet back.
I do not understand how our county, specifically our city, can spend around $5 million on renovating downtown and not have funds for a topnotch animal shelter. Let’s see here. We deserve to look our best even though thousands of stray cats and dogs are running loose through our beautiful town. At least our strays will have the old city fountain to get a drink of water from.
And let’s not forget, Warren County could possibly be debt free by 2013 according to County Executive Kenneth Rogers. Care to guess how many strays we will have by then? Maybe we will be able to reopen the shelter in 2013.
Don’t get me wrong. I am all for paying off debts as soon as it is reasonably possible and for having a beautiful town. But like it has already been said, our county and city will be running rabid with stray animals that may or may not bite an innocent person in their own yard or maybe when they’re taking a walk.
Please take responsibility and have your pet spayed or neutered and obey the leash law.
Sheri Bowers
Cherry Lane
McMinnville