The Local Animal Shelter

Finally, we had a chance to take Robbie to spend the money he had earned to help the animals at the local animal shelter. Robbie was very excited.


We took him to Walmart so that he could get more bang for his buck - and he was thrilled with the amount of things he was able to purchase; two large bags of dog food, one box of canned cat food (the shelters apparently use this to give cats medicine), several cat toys (couldn't donate our eyeball toys because they ask for toys without catnip), several dog toys, three dog dishes, several large bags of dog treats, and a large dog bed and a small dog bed (I'll be posting a tutorial on these this week).


Robbie always talks about saving animals when he "grows up" - so this was a great experience for him. I wanted to be sure that it had a large impact on him so a large quantity of items donated was important. I also wanted to be sure that he felt like he was the one making the impact, so we had him do as much of it as he could... including paying.


Robbie packed the car - and Robbie unloaded the car. We helped him, but I tried to also have him talk to the shelter to let them know that he had things he wanted to donate. He did great.

After we gave them all the donations, we took him to see the animals. This was his first time visiting an animal shelter. I'm sure we'll go more often now that I know where it is. This was my first time going to a shelter that wasn't full of animals. I am happy to report that there were more empty shelters than there were occupied ones. And there were many that had already been adopted. I'm hoping that the recent attention that the media has given to these Puppy Mill rescues had brought more awareness and compassion in the community.

It's my hope that doing things like this and showing Robbie how good it feels to help those in need - be it people or animals - is a gift in itself. Hopefully, this is only the beginning.