Poochapalooza

 

Thank you to all the people and pets who attended our first annual Poochapalooza event. We had a wonderful crowd of people and dogs come out on that chilly day. We raised close to $1,600 The money will go into our dog park fund.

We would like to thank Tanger Outlet for allowing us to use their building. Thanks to the Tuscola Women’s Club for their donation of cakes and desserts. Thank you to the many individuals and businesses who donated items for prizes. Thanks to McDonald’s for the donation lunch for our volunteers.

We would like to thank our sponsors: Custom Screen Printing, Okaw Veterinary Clinic, Dairy Queen, Nancy Snook, Jane Dallas - Avon sales representative, the Gawthorp Pugs owned by Gordon and Ellen Gawthrop, Jarman Center Senior Living, John Davis - State Farm agent, Celeste Taylor, High 5 Pet Treats, Howard and Letha Snow and Karen Bretzlaff.

We would like to thank our volunteers for all their hard work. Thanks to Ashley Hudson for all your work. Without your hard work, we wouldn’t have had such a successful event.

And thanks to our vendors: Avon, Cookie Lee jewelry, Dogs-N-Paws, Happy PAWZ Balancing TTouch for Animals, High 5 Pet Treats, Jarman Center, Just Sayin’ Vinyl Graphics and Printed Apparel, Okaw Veterinary Clinic, Outside the Box Cupcakes, Scentsy, Shawn Ealy Designs and Thirty-One Gifts.

We are starting work on the Poochapalooza event for next year. If you would be interested in helping plan the event, volunteer, sponsor or be a vendor, please email us at hands4pawsinc@yahoo.com or call 217-253-3221.

Want a dog park in Tuscola? We need your help!

We have been planning and fundraising to build a dog park in Tuscola. We need volunteers to help us. If you would like to help, please email us at hands4pawsinc@yahoo.com

Dog Park

We presented our idea of a downtown dog play area to the Tuscola City Board. They thanked us for the informative presentation. The board discussed it and were in favor of a dog park, just not at the downtown location. The city board stated that two people had shown interest in purchasing the property to build a business. The city will be making their budget for the upcoming fiscal year so we are putting our bid in to the "wish list" to receive funding if the city has extra money next year.

During our next planning meeting we discussed other locations for a dog park. We are gathering information about each of these locations. The locations we are currently looking at have more space than the downtown location. We have several pros and cons to each location. Check out our next meeting to learn more!

 

 

 

 If you have driven down Sale Street in downtown Tuscola during the past few weeks, you've seen the demolition of two buildings. The demolished buildings leave a large empty hole downtown. What to do with the hole? Put in an area for dogs to play, of course. These two lots measure 50 x 120 feet, a nice size for a play area for dogs.

The area can be used by dog owners to exercise their dogs and to let their dog play with other dogs. We also plan to have events, such as dog classes and shelter adoptions, here. We hope the park will be a great new way to educate people about taking care of their pets and about adopting from our shelter. We also hope to have the shelter dogs come to the park for exercise and play.

We are asking the city of Tuscola to help make this happen. The city owns the property. We are working with Brian Moody from TEDI and approaching the city council for support of the project. We have presented a basic plan to the city and will present a more detailed design, budget and rules to the city. Upon approval of the project, we will continue to meet and to develop the project.

We have done quite a bit of research on dog parks in order to prepare for this project. We have also talked with the Champaign and Urbana Park Districts about how they developed and run their dog parks. Here are links to guidelines and other information that we are following to make the dog park successful.

         UC Davis article about dog parks

         APDT article about dog parks

         APDT page with several articles about dog parks

         CPDT article about dog parks

         AKC article about dog parks

Some of the biggest worries we have heard about, stink and mud, are easily prevented and are the least of any problems in a dog park.

Meetings are held in the Jarman Center dining room located at 704 N. Main Street in Tuscola. Please watch this page for the next posted meeting. If you can’t make the meeting, please send us and email with your contact info.