Today our day started with decorating name tags, turtle puzzles, meeting up with old friends from past years of camp, and name games.
At 9:30, our first guest speaker of the week arrived. Michelle Douglas is a vet at BEVS and in her spare time volunteers for Vermont Therapy Dogs. She brought her three dogs with her (Ritter, Odin, and Roomer - all named after mountains or winter sports!), allowing us to experience the joys of hanging out and cuddling with a therapy dog. She brought out one dog at a time while campers pet and snuggled, and explained what she does when she's working with her dogs. Michelle primarily works with children since Ritter and Odin love to lay down and cuddle so much. She does local reading programs at schools, visits colleges, the hospital, and also goes to disaster relief events.
After Michelle left, we ate our snacks and got our Camp Paw Paw shirts for a group picture. Campers don't have to wear this shirt every day. After this, we started our tours of the humane society. This included meeting the cats, guinea pigs, bunnies, and ferrets. We briefly learned about what the volunteers do each morning to ensure that the animals in the shelter are happy, healthy, and comfortable. We learned about the three feral cats that camp out behind the shelter. Aladdin, Cameron, and Mr. Jingles are the three cats that the Humane Society provides shelter, food and water to every day, year round. Throughout the week, campers will be helping to give these cats food and water. Today we were lucky enough to have several spottings!
While some were touring, others played games or hung out with friends. When tours were done, we had our lunch at the picnic tables. Lunch was followed by some requested "free time" where campers hung out with friends, sang to their favorite songs, "ooh"d and "ahh"d over the most popular Snookums (the cutest and sweetest of all shelter cats), and played games.
Erin Alamed was our afternoon guest. She works as the shelter's director or volunteers. She and her furry, four-legged friend, Shelby, stopped by to visit and tell us all about how the shelter works and what it takes to keep it running smoothly. We then cuddled and played with Shelby until she was ready for a nap.
We made our way back to the tent and fed Carmen, the box turtle that we will be watching for the week, and fed the feral cats. Campers spent the rest of the afternoon playing games, working on friendship bracelets and hanging out with friends.
