Students rent puppies for charity
On March 31and April 1, Florida State University’s Collegiate Merchandizing Association held Rent a Puppy Event to raise money for the local animal shelters and raise awareness about adopting dogs.
“This is a really cool idea all of us who live on campus can’t have dogs,” said Melanie Rowe, Community Service Chair of CMA. “What a great way for people to get their puppy fix and at the same time be attributing it to a great cause.”
FSU students Michelle Burkhelder (Left) and Colleen Delaney play with Lil' Jude - a puppy the rented for 15 minutes.
Rowe found the idea by Googling “unique fundraising ideas.” She found that a couple of colleges had hosted the event successfully before. One college made $500 in one day. The CMA event charged $3 for 15 minutes with a dog and $5 for half an hour. All proceeds went to the Capital Ark Animal Shelter.
“I’ve been working on this idea since late January,” said Rowe.
She contacted several animal shelters across Tallahassee to get puppies and dogs for the event, including the Tallahassee Shelter and the Chat of Wakulla County Animal Adoption Center.
“Dogs are in and out of shelters every day. They get adopted and stuff like that, hard to nail down stuff in advance,”said Rowe. The organization had to postpone the event, scheduled earlier last week, because the shelters didn’t have any puppies.
There has been some interest shown in adopting the dogs, but no one has committed.
Dogs like Rose (featured above) were able to raise money for their shelters by playing in the sunshine all day.
“In the United States, there are approximately 8 million homeless pets,” said Row. “Constant effort of shelters, across the Us to raise awareness about the animals, these are great animals, it makes me so sad when people go to breeders and pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars when they can go to shelters and pay a fraction of that price.”
In Tallahassee there are a couple thousand homeless pets. The group also tried to promote spaying at neutering at the event. They wanted to inform students that having their dogs fixed helps prevent future generations of homeless animals.
“The hard thing is that people are always going to favor puppies over older dogs, we’re seeing it here at the event,” said Rowe.
The only negative thing at the event seemed to be that there was a limited amount of puppies. Students waited patiently around the tented area to hopefully get a chance to play with the puppies.
“We would definitely like to host this event again next semester,” said Rowe.
