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Community Corner

Dearborn Animal Shelter Gears Up for Mutt Strut

The pledge-driven Mutt Strut happens May 14-15 at Ford Field, and fundraising efforts are under way.

Dog owners and lovers, get ready to walk.

The Friends for the Dearborn Animal Shelter will host its sixth annual Mutt Strut May 14-15 at in Dearborn. The pledge-driven walk will raise money to help support the shelter while promoting education and socialization for pet owners and their four-legged friends, and focusing on recycling and sustainability.

"It's all about fun, but it's also about educating owners," said Kelle Sisung, development director for the animal shelter. "This is a two-day example of what you can do, and how you can bond with your dog."

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The Mutt Strut was the very first event Sisung developed when she joined the shelter in 2005.

"I had some crazy idea that we needed a dog walk because what better way to spotlight an animal shelter than to get a lot of animal lovers together to bond with their dogs on a great day out in Dearborn," she said. "Now it's become a really huge event in our community."

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The 1.9-mile walk will take people through the west Dearborn business district. At the park, where the walk starts and ends, will be an exhibition and events area. The shelter will host multiple activities throughout the weekend for pets and their owners, including games, contests, pet caricatures, performances and more.

Last year's event drew in 3,000 participants and raised nearly $90,000 in donations. 

For the past two years, the shelter's top pledge-getter was Yvette Rowan, who goes door-to-door for donations with her "Otto-mobile," a small stroller that her hairless Sphynx Otto rides in during their walks outdoors.

She began collecting donations for the shelter in 2009 and created a pledge page on the group's website with pictures of her cat. In 2010, with the help of Otto (one of three hairless cats she owns), she collected $2,700.

"I put Otto up there and had a huge response just because he’s so unique looking," she said. "I put him in a stroller and everyone wanted to hold him and so it made it kind of kitschy. It was like, 'Oh, five bucks and you can hold the cat,' and it ended up raising a lot of money, surprisingly."

Many of her donations come from Facebook friends, but her efforts to support the shelter have caught the attention of pet-lovers far from Dearborn. 

"I’ve had money come from Australia," she said, "and it usually comes from other Sphynx owners, people who have no idea where Dearborn is. It’s this tight-knit little Sphynx community and they’re very supportive of any kind of fundraising where Sphynx cats are involved."

The Dearborn Animal Shelter is a nonprofit organization that works in partnership with the city. The Friends organization has been operating it since 1993 and relies almost exclusively on donations for its day-to-day operations, with less than 9 percent of its $750,000 annual budget funded by the city.

"Our shelter is quite tiny," said Michelle O'Dell, a volunteer and exhibitor liaison for the strut and its participating businesses, "but ... at any given time, we have over 300 animals housed inside our facility, not counting what we have in foster care. All of the money we raise goes to the shelter itself."

Heather Mehi, shelter manager and one of the other top fundraisers for the Mutt Strut, said, “I work for the organization, so I see where the money goes.  It goes to the animals and we need it for them. We need it to be able to keep them in a safe place and to keep them healthy until they can find a home.” 

Mehi walks the walk, too. Her home includes 13 dogs–all rescues, and most of them pit bulls. In 2009, she adopted two Chihuahuas that were rescued from the Dearborn home of Kenneth Lang, a dog hoarder that police discovered with over a hundred Chihuahuas, with another 150 dead and stored in freezers at his home. 

Lang's house has since been demolished, and the rescued Chihuahuas will be reunited at this year's Mutt Strut. It is the second reunion the Friends have hosted for the small dogs and their big-hearted owners.

Recycling and sustainability are a focus of this year's strut. They will be promoting green-friendly products from pet beds to pet foods and biodegradable doggy waste bags.

It will also provide a good opportunity for people to learn about the Recycl-A-Bullz initiative, which works to dispel the myth that bully breeds are inherently violent or dangerous to public safety. Nearly 25 percent of the shelter's canine population are bully breeds or bully-mixed breeds.

"Pitt bulls have a terrible stereotype about them, and they are not all bad," O'Dell said. "We try to pick the ones that we can rehabilitate and get them back out into the community and get them homes."

"In most communities, if you bring a pit bull in, right away they put them down," she added. "We do not do that; we are a no-kill shelter. We will keep animals at our facility, and we have had animals in the past that were with us for over a year, and they will stay with us until we can find them a home."

To help the animals find homes, donate to individuals and teams participating in the Dearborn Mutt Strut by visiting the event's website.

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