Council Backs Short-Term Animal Shelter

The Bowie City Council voted 5-2 to fund the shelter in the upcoming fiscal year.

Bowie pet owners may no longer have to travel to a county facility to pick up lost pets after the city council voted Monday to establish a city-run, short-term animal shelter in 2014. In the proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget, city staff recommended keeping the shelter in the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) for one more year to allow for more data collection from Bowie Animal Control to determine if there was a need for the shelter. Emotions ran high at times as the council debated the merits of a city-funded facility for Bowie's lost and stray animals.  Councilman Dennis Brady (at-large), a long time advocate for a city-run shelter, encouraged his fellow council members to support moving the facility to the FY2014 budget. “We should show …

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Residents Advocate for City-Run Shelter in 2014

Mayor G. Frederick Robinson says he will hear advocates out, but remains unconvinced.

The activist group Bowie Citizens for Local Animal Welfare (CLAW) wants to keep Bowie's lost pets local. That's why at Monday's budget workession CLAW plans to call for a city-run facility which would house lost animals for three to five days. Advocates are hoping the Bowie City Council will include it in the Fiscal Year 2014 budget. Currently, when a lost animal is picked up in Bowie by the city’s animal control department, it is brought to a holding facility at city hall. An email and/or text alert is sent out to residents registered for pet pickup alerts, and if no one claims the animal by the end of the day, it is transported to the county animal management facility in Upper Marlboro. CLAW President Connie Carter said this system does …

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Bowie CLAW General Meeting

Bowie CLAW's first general meeting of 2013 will be held on Tuesday.

Local Man Faces Deployment, Seeks Foster Home for Pups

Due to a pending military deployment and other issues, a local family is seeking a temporary foster home for their two Maltese dogs.

Bowie CLAW is seeking a temporary foster home for two Maltese dogs on behalf of a local military family. The two dogs, Isabelle and Mona, are 2 and 1 and a half years old respectively, and housetrained. Due to a pending deployment and other health and housing issues, the family will be unable to care for their pets full-time and are seeking a foster family to take primary care of the animals from Sept. 29 until the husband returns from deployment in November 2013, said Bowie CLAW’s Connie Carter. The pet owners will pay for all veterinary, grooming, feeding and other pet-related expenses. Carter said the wife in the family, who will remain in the area, would like to take the dogs to their veterinary and grooming appointments, and possibly …

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Bowie CLAW Donates Pet Oxygen Masks to BVFD

Nearly 50 masks have been distributed to Bowie volunteer fire stations since April 2012.

The Bowie Volunteer Fire Department's Northview Station is now more prepared to handle pet-related emergencies after this week’s donation from Bowie CLAW. The local animal welfare group donated 27 sets of pet oxygen masks to the fire station on Tuesday. Each set contains three masks—sized small, medium and large—and are good for multiple uses, Bowie CLAW member Connie Carter said. “The whole idea behind this is to make sure that every fire station in Bowie has a set of oxygen masks, so whoever does the call has a set to help the animals in case they are in need,” Carter said. Each set of masks and their storage boxes cost about $100, Carter said. Money for the masks were generated at a Pasta for Pets spaghetti dinner fundraiser held at the…

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Jenni Pompi

10:11 am on Thursday, August 9, 2012

Bowie has such great volunteers. It is nice to seem them supporting each other.   more ›