Monday, October 29, 2012

So Many Ways to Enjoy Woofstock and Do Good


Truly, it is not that hard to raise $300 dollars. Find 12 people to donate $25, thirty to chip in $10, sixty kind-hearted souls at $5 a head, or mix it up. Given the cause, it should be easy, especially on Facebook, or an email to friends and family about the good their help will do. Plus, there is that possibility of winning the fancy iPad for doing a good thing well.
Raise $300 by Saturday, November 10th, bring the money to Woofstock, and you are automatically eligible to win the $825 iPad tablet, and get the T-shirts, and have a blast with your dog, your family, your friends’ dogs, or all of the above.  Or you can raise $300, stay where you are, be entered to win, and hope the phone rings. 
Enter the Walk-for-the-Animals Mutt Strut Relay and never leave your home. A “Virtual Walker,” is someone who cares enough to raise or donate money, but will not be present at Woofstock. Virtual Walkers will miss a special festival, but they can be anywhere in the world and support someone here in Aiken, and a very special cause.  There is still time to do it.
Of course you don’t have to raise $300 to participate.  A whole family and all their dogs can parade in the Woofstock Mutt Strut for $25, or one adult for $10, child under 12 for $5. 
Once you have the dogs out, you might want to see if they are the Best Kisser, can perform the Best Trick, or are sporting the Best Costume.  Register for those three contests between 11 and 12 o’clock at Woofstock. 
Three student judges won their titles by entering the Woofstock Essay Contest and answering the question, “What can we do about all the unwanted puppies and kittens?
Sophia Frank, Christian Madden and Sofia Ferreira will be helping to select the winners of the Dog contests: Best Kisser (11:30), Best Trick (12 noon), and Best Costume (12:30). 
Even if you are not participating in the Mutt Strut Relay and walking for Aiken County’s homeless pets, you can come out for the contests, or just come out and have a blast, with or without a dog.
The Woofstock Festival, a day full of family fun, food, and music, is a huge community event made possible by volunteers, local clubs and businesses, and the residents of Aiken County who love their animals. Every dollar raised, after expenses, will go towards our new shelter.
The vision for the new Aiken County Animal Shelter is a happy, healthy place that is the heart of a responsible, animal-loving county.
Join us at Woofstock on November 10th.  Enter the Mutt Strut Relay and walk for the homeless cats and dogs. We promise a memorable experience.
Or, if you are busy that day, think about becoming a foster home.  Unfortunately, the need for temporary guardians for puppies and kittens is constant.  Get involved.  It may be one of the most rewarding commitments you ever make. 
  FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”


October 15th thru 21st    

Received: 48 dogs and 30 cats!
Adopted: 6 dogs and 4 cats
Euthanized: 45 dogs and 41 cats

 Aiken County Shelter “Pets of the Week!” So much LOVE for so little!

  MONTY1 yr. Soft, affectionate Lab mix for $70.  Tiny price for a great friend caption
COCONUT- precious young adult female. Yours for only $35

 

  *All adoption fees include: Spay/Neuter, heartworm test, all shots, worming, and microchip

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Social Media Wave Assists the New County Shelter


FOTAS is on the Social Media bandwagon using facebook, twitter, YouTube, BLOGS and the FOTAS website. These tools are used for better communication. Events like the MuttStrut Walk for the Animals at Woofstock on Nov 10th, PetSmart Adoption Days, or the need for dog and cat food or stuffed animals for our shelter pups; all are online.
Our website continues to evolve and is now connected to other Social Media tools.
With your online participation, we could be so much more effective in reaching our audience: all residents and businesses from the entire Aiken County Community. We want to tell you all about current programs, needs, the new County Shelter and the services it will provide.
Social media has a great impact here. It can be fun and easy to spread the word to the entire County.
With 880+ facebook followers, FOTAS can reach upwards of 10,000 people viewing our posts in any given week. Our posts are shared and our message spreads!
How amazing that we can “speak” to you and to people you know and then to their friends and friends of their friends, all from one message posted on our FOTAS facebook page, our website or a Twitter “tweet”. It’s like the Telephone Game without the distortion of the message!
Like Us on facebook to receive FOTAS updates along with friends updates. Follow us on Twitter. Visit our website for more information and direct access to these sites.
Share our latest message! When we post something of interest, like our Capital Campaign, a cute kitten or great dog, share it on your facebook page or with individual friends who may share your interest in animals or just tweet it out. Think of the possibilities and all the people we could reach! If they want to help they can, if not, no harm, no foul. No phone calls or personal pleas for help involved. People can choose to read our message or not. No annoying spam like emails need be sent out through this process.
One of our dogs was adopted by a family in Louisiana due to a shared post! All Events and adoptable animals’ photos are on our website, facebook and Petfinder thanks to Annette, Susan and Elizabeth.
These powerful tools have led to pet adoptions, assistance from and partnerships with other organizations, brought in donations for specific needs and even helped find lost pets. Feel free to tweet messages from @FotasAiken and reach even more people!
Our website has a moving YouTube video tour of our current shelter, as well as fun videos from past events like last years Fall Steeplechase!
Please use these powerful tools to help FOTAS reach the entire Community that the Aiken County Animals Shelter serves.
With your help, we can reach those with the interest and resources to help us attain our biggest goal yet: to build and outfit a new Aiken County Animal Shelter by the end of 2013! Let’s help the abandoned animals of OUR County.
FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org  

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”


October 8th thru 15th   

Received: 96 dogs! and 38 cats!
Adopted: 14 dogs and 3 cats!
Euthanized: 32 dogs and 33 cats

Aiken County Shelter “Pets of the Week!” So much LOVE for so little! 

 

BESS-1+ yr Choc. Lab mix Sweet gal Looking to love you! A special price of only $35!

 

CHANCE-3 yr Loyal Australian Cattle -Blue Healer cross. A bargain at Only $35!

 

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

What a Day for FOTAS at the Chocolate Festival



If you slid into the 24th Annual Chocolate Festival off of Fairfield Avenue last week, between the Karaoke Bandstand and the big bouncy slide, you encountered the enthusiastic representatives of FOTAS. 

Sergio, DaVinci, Joanie, Ritchie and Rex, five unique adoptable dogs from the Aiken County Shelter, represented us the best.  They were the stars.  At very least, many attendees stopped to lavish attention on those lovable dogs; at best, two of them were adopted, Sergio and DaVinci, and went home with their new families. 

Occasionally, it seemed like Rex, Ritchie and Joanie were going to be chosen, too.  But it wasn’t their day.  Check them out on Petfinder.com, and see for yourself how special they truly are.

The Serteen animal-lovers, Katie, Jada, Madison, Justine, Carly and their supervisor, Valorie, came to help show off the dogs. The Serteens have become regular ambassadors for the animals at the County Shelter, and FOTAS has learned to count on them as valued members of our family.

The new edition of the “FOTAS Dogfather” tee-shirt and the brand new “Fairy Dogmother” shirt, both conversation starters among dog enthusiasts, went on sale that day.  If sales at the Chocolate Festival are an indication, and you want one, you had better come out to Steeplechase (10/27) or Woofstock (11/10) and get it while supplies last.

The corner assigned to FOTAS was perfect.  It offered a big area to set up dog pens and retail displays for our hats and shirts; two picnic tables for folks to gather around; lots of shade, and many, many attendees walking by.

In our quest to bring the plight of the county’s homeless animals to the public’s attention, and to bring public concern and involvement to our community shelter, FOTAS welcomes the opportunity to participate in community events like ST. Mary’s Chocolate Festival.

This year, we are focused on our Capital Campaign for the new Aiken County Shelter, due to break ground in a few months. Our volunteers work to make the public aware that we exist, that the need is urgent, and that together we can truly make an essential difference.

As people stopped to chat last week, we were amazed again by how many still do not know that there are two local shelters: one private, one public; one state-of-the-art-brand-spanking-new, and one that was grossly inadequate ten years ago, but is obligated to function in service to the public, but not to the animals.

Our next major fundraiser is our second Woofstock Festival on November 10th.  It kicks of with our first “Mutt Strut,” a family-oriented dog parade that will kick off the festival.  Last Saturday, we had our Mutt Strut posters and flyers out.  If you missed yours, go to the FOTAS website www.fotasaiken.org/woofstock

Register, get friends and family to sponsor you and your dog(s) participation, raise $100, $200 or $300+ dollars and win prizes.  The biggest prize is a chance to win a 64gig iPad.

The Grand Prize is a shelter we can take pride in.  Please help.

FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”


October 1st thru 7th   

AVIS-A young adult Calico tabby. Gorgeous markings, sweet dispositions. $35
Received: 76 dogs! and 17 cats!
Adopted: 12 dogs and 10 cats!
Euthanized: 32 dogs and 17 cats

Aiken County Animal Shelter "Pets of the Week!" So much LOVE for so little!

TRAVIS-A handsome gentle bear  who deserves a forever home. $70 



 

*All adoption fees include: Spay/Neuter, heartworm test, all shots, worming, and microchip

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Site Prep for the New County Shelter is a Family Affair


“We design everything from the ground down,” is how Tilden Hilderbrand sums up the work he and his partner, Todd Hass, do as a surveying and civil engineering firm here in Aiken.
In fact, if one were to walk across Aiken County, you would be hard pressed not to cross a site that they have worked on, especially if you include Citizens Park or the tennis courts at Odell Weeks, or the more than 350 jobs they have done for the Aiken County Schools, People’s Bank, Holiday Inn, Cedar Creek, and the new Fresh Market project on Whiskey Road. 
However, it is unlikely that any undertaking in the realms of site development connects to more hearts these days than the one on the corner of May Royal and Wire Road, the site of the new Aiken County Animal Shelter.  And for Tilden Hilderbrand, it is a special labor of love. Here’s why.
Three years ago this month, eight stalwart FOTAS volunteers turned out for our very first public event, “Trick-or-Treat on Newberry Street.”  Among the new organization’s representatives were Tilden Hilderbrand’s wife, Susan, and his two son’s Alex and Seth (pictured here with our Cat-of-the-Week).
 Susan and the boy’s commitment to the adoptable animals at the County Shelter predated FOTAS.  Nearly every day after school, they took pictures of the adoptable dogs and cats and faithfully put them up on the website, Petfinder.com.  That October, 2009, the Hilderbrand boys went far beyond service to FOTAS in wearing our paper maché mascot costumes. 
FOTAS also came to rely on Susan for her creative displays of adoptable animals at events (like the Wizard of Oz), and the County Shelter signs in True Value Hardware, Stoplight Deli and Bone-i-Fide Bakery downtown.  Without her beautiful photographs, people who would never go to the shelter might not know that the animals or the shelter, were even there.
Now Tilden Hilderbrand has joined the family in service to a project more than a decade on the minds of too few who knew the need.  And when you are designing a Public Animal Shelter, “everything from the ground down,” gets at the essentials of the project.
The four-plus acre lot is a rolling woodlot, and the architect working with the county and FOTAS, was determined to keep as much of the wooded park-like feel that the project design could realistically encompass. 
Hass and Hilderbrand’s expertise will save many trees; they will determine the minimum earth to be moved; how the facility will tie into utilities; they assure the accuracy of the site footprint; and, who to see for what essential permits. 
Every single person connected with this project understands how important every dollar saved is to its ultimate success, and no one more than Hilderbrand and Hass. 
Once again, Aiken County owes a debt of gratitude to this firm, and once again FOTAS is deeply thankful to the Hilderbrand family.
Brochures depicting the new County Shelter and opportunities to contribute will be available soon.  Get excited; get involved! 
  FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”


September 24th thru 30th   

Received: 30 dogs and 60 cats!
Adopted: 16 dogs and 4 cats
Put down: 22 dogs and 47 cats

 Aiken County Shelter “Pets of the Week!” So much LOVE for so little!

SERGIO 1 yr. loveable Lab mix needs to go, so he is on sale for $35.  Great deal for a great dog.
MOMI (3yrs) and Tilden’s son, SETH – The cat is gorgeous.  She is yours for only $35.            
 *All adoption fees include: Spay/Neuter, heartworm test, all shots, worming, and microchip