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Trumbull commissioners unite to defend county dog pound from petition complaints
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Trumbull County commissioners are defending the Trumbull County Dog Pound from an online attack on its executive dog warden, Gwen Logan.
An online petition calls for new leadership at the county dog pound on Anderson Avenue in Howland because of the way dogs are caged and managed.
“It is a deplorable facility, and we need to push for a new facility that is designed properly and sets the dogs up for success,” according to the petition, which is addressed to Commissioners Frank Fuda, Dan Polivka and Mauro Cantalamessa.
All three commissioners addressed the complaints, describing the numerous improvements that have been made at the facility in recent years in response to complaints from across the country before Logan took over management of the facility.
“It’s a lot better than it was in the past,” Polivka said, mentioning the addition of Saturday adoption hours, a change in policy to prevent painful euthanizations, half-price adoption days, physical improvements to the dog pound and a dramatically lower kill rate.
“We looked at the price for a new facility. It would be over a million dollars,” Polivka said, adding that the county was in negotiations with the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County a few years ago to combine its operation with the county dog pound in the Welfare League’s new facility in Vienna, but the county could not afford it.
The county cannot add on to the existing dog pound because of flood-plain issues. There is a lot of commentary on Facebook about the county dog pound, not all of it true, Fuda said.
Fuda and longtime dog pound volunteer Marty Conklin both said they wished people with complaints about the pound would work in cooperation with the county.
“If you have differences, work together,” Fuda said.
Conklin said she’s been volunteering at the pound nearly every day since 2008, when the pound was “one of the worst ones in Ohio,” when it was known as “Ohio’s hell hole.”
The kill rate was nearly 100 percent then, and it’s now 3 percent, she said.
Responding to one of the petition’s specific complaints – kennels that don’t stop dogs from injuring or spreading disease to other dogs – Cantalamessa said all 14 kennels are being replaced.
He said the county will also keep open the possibility that the county will replace its current dog pound or join with the Animal Welfare League in the future, as finances allow.