Like I briefly mentioned on Tuesday, I finally got the opportunity to volunteer at one of B-More Dog‘s Community Pit Bull Days last weekend. B-More Dog holds these events once a month to provide free or low cost vaccinations to dog owners in generally low income communities. As well as the vaccinations, B-More Dog schedules free spays and neuters for “pit bull” dogs, does a leash and collar exchange, and gives general wellness advice at these events. Working directly towards their mission of promoting responsible pet ownership, B-More Dog takes it as an opportunity to connect with the community and help those who might not have the resources or sometimes even the knowledge to provide their dogs with the care they need.

For these types of events, you can’t just put information out on social media and expect for your target audience to show up. B-More Dog went into the community and put up flyers, went door to door, and used word of mouth spread the news. That’s more effective to reach who you want, as evidenced by the amount of people and dogs that came.

From what I understand, this weekend’s event was record breaking with a total of 91 dogs vaccinated, and 23 (24?) spay/neuters scheduled! I can report that it is an utterly exhausting six hours – but it is so, so worth it.  I was lucky in that I spent most of my time at the “photo booth” capturing adorable images like this, and got spared some of the tougher stuff (dogs in very poor health, etc.).

For the most part, I got the impression that the people we helped loved their dogs as part of the family, and were extremely grateful that we gave them the opportunity to care for them properly.

Look at the collars we received back from the leash and collar exchange! Yes, there are a few chains in there. The way this works is they give us their old collars or whatever they’re using, and we give them a brand new leash and collar set. These are the types of things B-More Dog raises money for: to buy the new leashes and collars, in addition to of course covering the vaccinations and the spay/neuters.

What an amazing day with an amazing group of people!