If you and your cat or dog show up at Auto Value of L’Anse today between 9a.m. and 1p.m. and donate a used blanket, some canned pet food or kitty litter, you can get a picture taken of your pet with the Easter Bunny. Free! No foolin’! That’s because the business is using its first ever Pet Appreciation Day to give the Copper Country Humane Society (CCHS) a hand. Co-owners Jackie and Ron Skytta, longtime animal-lovers and puppy parents of shop dogs Adah and Annie, have announced that anyone showing up with items from CCHS’s website priority wish list can leave the store with a holiday pic. The Skyttas said other items earning a free pet picture include paper towels, laundry detergent, bleach, small paper plates (6” in diameter) and white or colored copy paper.
The CCHS is deeply grateful to Auto Value of L’Anse and the many other businesses that have stepped up to help animal over the years. That’s because the no-kill animal shelter is 100% locally funded. Contrary to a common misunderstanding, the CCHS is not a subsidiary of any national or state group, such as the Humane Society of America. CCHS relies entirely on grants, fundraising events and donations to provide a safe haven for the many animals they have housed and rehomed since the group first formed in 1972.
The shelter, which looks after approximately 900 lost and abandoned animals from Baraga, Houghton and Keweenaw Counties each year, is also proactive when it comes to animal protection. They offer low-cost vaccination clinics in Houghton each spring and, for the first time, this year will offer one in Baraga County as well. Dates and locations for the clinics will be announced soon. In the meantime, on Mondays from 4-8 p.m. you can bring in your cat or dog to be microchipped at the rate of $20 per animal, something that can cost pet-owners as much as $75 to do elsewhere.
I’ll continue to pass along information about the Copper Country Humane Society each month in this space. And, if any of my Tanglewood Farm animals do anything silly, you’ll be the first to know. Having said that, I can’t help but wonder if the Skyttas have ever tried photographing emus?
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This article first appeared on April, 1, 2017, in the Daily Mining Gazette