Animal Fair

On Saturday Carolina R&R hosted a booth at the Glenforest School's annual Animal Fair here in West Columbia, SC. The school holds the fair each year to allow rescues to raise funds and to help educate the public about animals. One of our goals as a rescue is to help with public education so we signed up and hoped for no rain. The event was to be held outside but with the rain, we all headed indoors to the rather dark auditorium. Since I was first on the scene, I procured two spaces by the front door and unloaded our fundraiser stuff in the pouring rain. I got done in enough time for it to stop raining and for Janet to arrive with her girl Pepper and the tables, display racks, and tent frame. Sara arrived with some festive hats and ACD breed info sheets. I then headed to go get another rescue member who lives here in Columbia, Karen, and her two ACDs, Diesel and Curry.

We got the booth set up in about a half hour and began to try to dry off. That's hard to do when all the dogs are wet and shaking off on you! Jake especially got soaked several times from walking back and forth to the car and taking potty breaks. My shoes were soaking wet from navigating the puddles in the parking lot. Regardless, we were proud of our booth!

Table set up with photos of our rescue at work, ACD breed handouts, and one corner of tugs on display:


Table set up with Buddy Biscuits and second corner of tugs on display:


Prizes for our dog trivia contest and hot dog eating contest (someone bought the remaining stuffed animals so gave away Buddy Biscuits as contest prizes, too!):


We got to see Hank, one of our fosters that got adopted here locally. He's growing like a weed and is only six months old! His new family adores him and we're so happy to see that.

Our gang of ACDs were among the best behaved dogs there and made all of us really proud. Jake preferred to sit on my chair and watch everyone go by. He sat there eyeballing the crowd until he caught someone's eye. He'd then pop up on the table with his front paws and lean forward to dole out kisses and be petted. We thought all the dogs were gonna explode from the amount of treats they were fed and the fierce competition of the hot dog eating contest (won by a little Dachschund actually). And, no, I have no pictures of the dogs. The lighting was terrible in that room and my camera wouldn't even focus on Jake's spots in that bad light.

The auditorium was crowded with dogs and people but the turnout was not the 500 people that came last year. So next year we'll hope for no rain and make more tugs!