Photo by Gage Vota
Drew Greenwood’s shop class at Union Local High School built and donated four large dog houses to the Belmont County Animal Shelter at the end of the school year.
MORRISTOWN — The Belmont County Animal Shelter recently received multiple dog houses constructed and donated by local students.
Drew Greenwood’s Union Local High School shop class built four dog houses in May. The Belmont County Animal Shelter was contacted by Union Local High School student Gunnar Bethel about how Greenwood’s shop class was constructing multiple wooden dog houses to be donated to the animal shelter at the end of the school year.
As well as making the dog houses, the Union Local high and middle school students also did a food and supply drive for the animal shelter in April.
“About every school does something for us, but since we’re right here Union Local almost every year does something for us as far as a food and supply drive,” Dog Warden Lisa Duvall said.
“That’s what keeps this place running. Granted we have a budget, but for all that we got coming in it just blows our budget out of the water.”
Another school that recently constructed dog houses for the animal shelter is the West Virginia Schools of Diversion and Transitions at the Ronald C. Mulholland Juvenile Center in Wheeling.
The students spent their final week of classes building and painting the dog houses to be able to donate them to the Belmont County Animal Shelter.
Each location donated four large dog houses for a total of eight. Duvall said the animal shelter mostly takes in bigger dogs, so the bigger dog houses were needed. The dogs spend their nights inside the shelter building, but during the day there are large cages outside that they are put in so the staff can clean the building.
“We take them out in the morning and feed, water and medicate them and clean up their breakfast bowls and start bringing them off the back porch outside,” Duvall said.
While speaking about donations, Duvall noted that individual people donate pillowcases, towels, sheets, stuffed animals and laundry detergent.
The animal shelter also accepts donations of plastic baby pools in the summertime because the dogs like to swim or lay in the pools in the hot weather. Some dogs will keep their pools for an extended time, but a few will get a pool and chew up the entire pool on the same day.
The shelter also accepts donations to cover veterinarian bills.
“People always talk about sponsoring a dog at the shelter, and nowadays it’s not sponsoring a dog to get adopted but it’s more of this extra vet care that we’re incurring. We’re picking up dogs and transferring them straight to the vet because they are in such bad shape,” Duvall said.
“If anyone sees Caesar or Pluto on our webpage, those are dogs that are on lifelong medications. If you want to sponsor, sponsor for their medications or medical bills.”
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