Angels with Tails

5/23/2016

Healthy eating and/or running is not on the agenda for today. Today, I'm gonna talk about dogs and cats. ( I like them so much.) Since I was in high school, I've been volunteering on and off with PAWS at their Angels with Tails events. Angels with Tails has been around far longer than PAWS' brick-and-mortar shelters. PAWS and other Chicago-based rescue groups come together in different neighborhoods throughout the summer for large outdoor adoption events.

A lot of the volunteers are animal handlers during the events. In the past, I've been a dog handler, meaning I get a specific dog assigned to me for the day. I am responsible for cuddling it (much like you see below), answering questions about it (its assumed age and breed, etc), making sure other people don't pick it up, taking it on potty breaks, giving it water, and overall giving it lots of love. There are also cat handlers, and they do similar things but inside of the stores.

This year, I worked as an adoption counselor. I educated the adopters before they brought their dogs home (I only did dog adoptions yesterday) and handled their paperwork. As much as I missed being a dog handler for these events, I still got to walk up and down the street and pet dogs.

Sunday's event was in the Gold Coast, in the ritziest area of the city. Participating stores allowed us to set up tables outside on the sidewalk, gave us access to their bathrooms, and a few stores hosted cats for the day. While you would think that these stores, such as Tod's, wouldn't want animals inside of the stores, they were incredibly accommodating.

It was a warm day in the city, but with our site being so close to the lake (which is always colder) and the wind and lack of sun from being towered over by a high building, we were freezing sitting at our tables! I took a lot of walks to get into the sun (and further west away from the lake) to warm up and see some cute dogs.