PORT ANGELES – Clallam County will restart its Animal Issues Advisory Committee following the impending closure of the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society’s Bark House facility, due to financial difficulties, which was announced last week.
County Commissioners made the decision to restart the committee at Monday’s work session, which featured at least a dozen representatives of local animal welfare organizations, all of them joining law enforcement in their concern about how to house dogs that are impounded going forward.
Commissioner Mark Ozias told KONP in an email that he will be working with Sheriff Brian King over the next two days to get a draft resolution prepared and hopefully have it ready by next week’s work session.
He said he’s “very hopeful that the increased level of communication and coordination that should arise from this effort will go a long way toward making sure our community is working together and with a unified strategy moving forward.”
Sheriff King also emphasized the need for a holistic solution involving the entire community.
“I don’t think it can just be law enforcement. I think it needs to be the community and law enforcement to come together and brainstorm to look for solutions, to see if there’s another organization willing to step up. None of this is cheap. A true solution is going to require a lot of money, and so I hope that as a collective of the community everybody can come together and provide us with some solutions that I can’t think of,” said King.
The owners of Fox Bell Farm, a horse training facility, have expressed some interest in purchasing the Bark House property. There was very little discussion about that at Monday’s meeting, but Ozias told KONP it’s his assumption that Fox Bell and OPHS will be exploring the idea together to see if they can work out a path forward.