Dogster Extraordinaire Husky Shepherd Gang sent me this yesterday, and I had to share it. What a wonderful tradition she has, and how inspirational for dog lovers. It’s probably a little late for this year, but something to try to arrange for next year, perhaps:
My family and I always get together every holiday season and go to our local animal shelter where we all take a different dog and go out for a walk. I know it sounds weird since I have a house full of foster dogs but we still really enjoy doing this.
This time of year they are always short on staff so the dogs who don’t get walked regularly anyways are left with just a skeleton staff (this is why we chose this time of year also).
It’s a great way to spend family time together, my mom, step dad, his son, my brother, sister in law, my daughter and this year my new nephew will be joining the walk. Often we also have family friends stop by the house and come with us.
One year we even had more people then dogs to walk so the dogs got extra special treatment that day with grooming and lots of love. We always bring a ton of dog treats and just take our time walking the dogs and spending time together.
At first the dogs are so excited so its a little bit challenging for people with not a lot of dog skills so we just get dressed for the cold weather and run with them for about 10 minutes then the dogs settle down and we always end up going much longer then an hour.
We also take turns with the dogs. I take the stronger more hyper dogs for a while and do some work with them to get their minds calmed down then hand that dog off then start another dog, plus there are always a few older dogs that just take their time walking and are perfect for kids or people with no dog skills to walk. Pretty much a dog for everyone!
We have kind of started a trend as a few other families we know now do the same thing where they live. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all Dogsters and their families went to a shelter over the holidays and just spent one hour walking, brushing, playing, petting a shelter dog!
That is what I want for Christmas!!!
(Husky Shepherd Gang, I hope you get what you want for Christmas! If not this year, then next year, for sure!)
