“I longed for a dog my entire life and couldn’t wait until I was older and living on my own to finally get one,” Bowser said.
Her first home as a 23-year-old mother with two children had a large backyard. She she went to her local humane society, Animal Friends in Trenton, in April 2006 to adopt.
That indirectly started her on a path toward becoming the executive director of Animal Friends Humane Society in Hamilton, where she has worked on multiple programs to both control animal population in the county and find homes for thousands of animals each year.
Back when she was looking for that first dog, she adopted a yellow Labrador retriever that was with her family for the next 13 years. Knowing the shelter was always in need of staff and volunteers, she went back to Animal Friends and applied for a position in their kennel. She didn’t know that would end up being her career.
She loved working with the animals as a kennel tech, and especially enjoyed spending time with the cats. After a few months, a full-time position in the front office opened.
In the next 14 years, she held positions in every department and eventually made her way to becoming executive director in 2018.
Working alongside many caring staff and volunteers the last 14 years, Bowser has played an integral part in the shelter increasing its live release rates from 49% in the Trenton shelter in 2007 to its current rate of 95% in our Hamilton shelter.
Animal Friends is the only open-admission shelter in Butler County. It places thousands of animals into homes each year, and it has been successful in maintaining no-kill save rates for cats and dogs.
One of the most successful programs is the Community Cat Program, which was . started in October 2012 and has led to nearly 10,000 cats being fixed.
“Through this program, outdoor cats residing in Butler County are spayed/neutered, vaccinated against Rabies, and given an ear-tip to signify that they’ve been sterilized,” she said.
“This method of TNR (trap-neuter-return) is the only effective means at controlling the population of free roaming community cats."
Using donations, volunteers set traps in targeted areas to catch unfixed cats. Those cats are brought to AFHS for surgery, which is a free service that AFHS offers.
AFHS offers a free spay/neuter program for cats and is constantly accepting donations to help in those efforts.
Animal Friends can be contacted at 513-867-5727 or www.animalfriendshs.org.
Contact contributing writer hir54bel@gmail.com
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