Remembering Bowie
News and headlines for December 1 - 6, 2024
In the news: Remembering little Bowie. A second lawsuit is filed against Riverside County officials for mismanagement and abuse at the pound. Another week, another pet food recall. Do you have what it takes to save lives? Communities are looking for someone to run their animal shelters. Barriers to a plant-based diet. A Festivus miracle. Bringing a pound into the current century. Evidence of dog-human relationships occurred thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:
Remembering little Bowie
This week marked the solemn anniversary of the killing of Bowie, a 10-pound puppy, by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care & Control.
After Bowie was surrendered because of a landlord’s no-pet policy, he sat at the pound for over three weeks, locked away from public view, in a cage by himself. Although scared, no one on staff socialized him. No staff member tried to get him out of his shell. No one showed him the compassion and kindness that studies prove make a life-and-death difference for shy little dogs.
Still, Bowie had an out. A rescue group came forward to give Bowie what staff at LACDACC would not: safety, love, and a loving home. It would be of no use. The same day that rescuers expressed interest in Bowie, the pound killed him without warning.
Instead of a new beginning, the little dog, who should have had his whole life ahead of him and posed no threat to anyone, was injected with an overdose of poison and turned to ash. He was barely 15 weeks old.
To make sure that never happened again, Bowie’s Law was introduced to require California “shelters” to notify rescuers before killing an animal. And given that such notifications are possible through shelter software already used by these facilities or available for free, complying would have required nothing more than a stroke on a keyboard: one click to notify rescuers that a life needs saving.
It was such a simple, commonsense law it is astonishing that anyone would oppose it. But it was opposed by most pounds in the state and their enablers, such as the National Animal Control Association and the California Animal Welfare Association, even if it meant killing puppies. And because of that opposition, it failed to pass.
Bowie; gone but not forgotten.
A second lawsuit is filed against Riverside County officials for mismanagement and abuse at the pound
A second lawsuit, involving 11 plaintiffs, has been filed against Riverside County officials alleging misuse of taxpayer money, resulting in severe neglect, abuse, and killing of animals at the pound. According to plaintiffs, the lawsuit stems from,
[T]he hiring of Erin Gettis as Director of Animal Services with no qualifications or experience… as a favor to her spouse who was Riverside County counsel, then removing her two weeks after an action for her mismanagement of Animal Services was filed by Walter Clark Legal Group and spinning it publicly as a “promotional opportunity” to an Executive Director position in Riverside University Health System (with no experience in healthcare management and patient care), and lastly hiring a fringe consultant, Kristen Hassen… for $2.5 million to fix the mess… created by hiring Gettis in the first place.
Plaintiffs argue that the County Executive Officer responsible for these decisions breached his fiduciary duties to the taxpayers and acted in bad faith. As a result, they allege that the pound,
[S]uffered from a lack of leadership, mismanagement, budget opacity, flouting of the Hayden Act, disregard for the health and safety of animals under its care, disinterest in working with the community and rescue organizations to place animals in homes, lack of veterinary care for the animals under its care, killing adoptable animals, or animals that could be made adoptable with reasonable efforts, in violation of the Hayden Act, keeping inaccurate records that, for example, labeled animals as having “behavioral” problems when they did not, then using that false label as an excuse to kill them, and brazen nepotism.
In the original lawsuit, which appears to have led to Gettis’ ouster, plaintiffs alleged that animal cruelty is “emblematic of the fundamental failings and pervasive deficiencies, the inertia and inaction, of RCDAS and its Director, Gettis.”
Animals should be treated ‘kindly,’ as required by law, and not, as RCDAS treats them, in dirty kennels, under inhumane conditions, subject to being killed in a helter-skelter manner and placed in barrels to be disposed.
Another week, another pet food recall