by Irene Soriano Brightman
Erin Viera from the Jane Goodall Institute’s Roots & Shoots Program requested DDR’s participation in Laurel Elementary’s EARTH DAY event held last Saturday, April 24, 2010!
We were the “PET ADOPTION” booth and what a fun day it was! “WE” involved me and volunteer and DDR foster mom, Brittany!We had a majority of our dogs showing at PETCO-Pasadena so Brittany brought the little sweety she was fostering, Coco! She also brought her own cute chiwiwi, Peanut who always likes to come along for the ride!
Knowing that we would be interacting mostly with elementary school kids, we made sure to have fun things like stickers and colorful displays!
Brittany came up with the great idea of providing coloring pages of doggies for the kids to color. 
The event was a lot of fun for the kids. Of course, everyone wanted to walk Coco and Peanut, they would all gather together and fawn over the two little sweeties. At times, the two little ones got overwhelmed with the kids but Brittany was good about letting the kids know to give them room to breathe. For the kids that played with either dog, they were given the choice of wearing I PLAYED WITH COCO or I PLAYED WITH PEANUT stickers. Many of the kids wanted both!
It was a bright sunny day and being right under the sun, the pair would try and get some shade and hide under our table. It was very cute!
Some parents came to the booth to find out about our available dogs for adoption as well as volunteering opportunities. Some of the kids came to color and look at the books we had. I was touched that some of the kids donated $1 -$2 from the money their parents gave them to buy tickets, “for the dogs.”
One boy had a very mature outlook on getting a dog courtesy of his parents guidance, he said,”I want a dog, but I can’t afford it right now.” One young lady even said about the RESCUE DOGS ARE THE BEST stickers, “They ARE the best because we adopted a rescue cat last month and she’s the best!”
Our big DDR banner has pictures of our pit bulls that have been adopted or waiting to be adopted. I did not encounter any negative comments about pit bulls and was quite happy to hear from different parents that they owned pit bulls or have owned them in the past. They would point to one of our DDR dogs in the banner and say, “S/he looked like that one.” This was so encouraging to hear since many of the negative commentary on pit bulls always involve them harming children.
The kids were wonderful and the Laurel Elementary staff and volunteers were great as our fellow booth staffers who had other wonderful displays and games for the kids to learn about the environment and the positive impact they can make!
Thank you Erin for inviting us and Laurel Elementary School
for having us!
It was a wonderful EARTH DAY event!
