Cairn Rescue USA

Scottish Games and Hot Dogs!

The 23rd Annual Virginia Scottish Games and Festival was held in Alexandria, Virginia on July 23 & 24. Veronica, our VP of Website Content, planned to attend the festival to raise awareness about the Cairn Terrier and various rescues. About two weeks before the event, she graciously invited some other CRUSA members to join her. We were told this would be an excellent opportunity to recruit volunteers, communicate to the public about the cairn and raise funds. So one by one, members of CRUSA in the local area began volunteering to spend their day working the crowd.

Lisa, our VP of Fundraising, was not going to miss this opportunity to sell items and raise much needed funds. So she began to work on an inventory. Lisa worked each day, late into the evening, creating items that might attract not only the cairn owner or the Scotsman but also the general public. By the time the festival began, we had an inventory that included: t-shirts, aprons, calendars, key chains, buttons, tote bags, memo pads, greeting cards, cairn statues, dog toys, rawhides, door mats, lanyards, bottle openers, wall signs, and more!

The day of the festival, Jodi H, a newer member to CRUSA (see Who's Who), Debbie H, Lisa and Linda met for the ride to the festival. We were all given complementary tickets thanks to Westie Rescue. However, our complementary parking pass was only good for Sunday. Lisa, having always been very persuasive, drove up to the policeman guarding the entrance. She gave him her CRUSA business card, the tickets and the parking pass. She explained that we were packing a ton of stuff and there must have been an error on the parking pass as we were to arrive today and not Sunday. He was quickly won over allowed her to enter the parking area. Once in, we located Veronica's tent and flagged down a golf cart to carry our load to the tent.

Set up began by unpacking and organizing the inventory. It was a blazing hot day and this simple task was difficult to do. We had so many items to display that we ended up putting some on a blanket on the ground. Shortly after arrival we made our first sale, a tartan bandana.

We had three dogs, Veronica had two and Lisa brought Robby. It was very hot for the little dogs but there was a dog pool available for them to cool off in from time to time. Robby enjoyed visits all day from little people including babies. He was a big hit with his two little white feet!

Debbie actively recruited foster homes and potential adopters while Linda worked the crowd for donations for Sophia's surgery. Jodi was the photographer and took several pictures of the activities going on both in and out of our tent. She also talked to people about the joy of fostering.

At the end of the day, sales had not been that great. However, Debbie reported that we had several serious leads on foster homes and volunteers. We all agreed that it was a good day despite the blazing heat.

On the ride home, Debbie and Lisa decided to return the following day too. After all we had a parking pass for Sunday. Sunday was the day of the dog games and we felt that the traffic would be more likely to shop and potentially volunteer.

When the games began, all the Westies and Scotties lined up to run. However, there were only three cairns present. Robby and Tavish, Veronica's dog entered the races. Robby and Tavish both won three blue ribbons. After the races, we all walked the dogs in a parade through the stadium and around the vendor stands. Again the heat was blazing down on everyone and all the dogs were very hot. Once we returned to the tent, all the dogs took turns getting into the doggie pool.

The day resulted in more sales but of less expensive items. In the end, we declared it a victory. We handed out a lot of information about CRUSA and made some money too.

We have already requested to march in the Scottish Christmas Parade in December and we plan to go to the festival next month.