Jasper is your new ONEN Dog of the Year!
Jasper was nominated by Joe & Ronni Kennedy who are neighbors of Jasper and his owner Sharon.
Jasper is a mixed-breed rescue dog who lives in the 1600 block of Wood Avenue. He is the most gentle, well-behaved dog you have ever met. He is a certified Therapy Dog and goes to the Cancer Center on Fillmore every Thursday to visit patients, who look forward to his tranquil presence as they take their chemo treatments.
Jasper also helps calm and train a foster dog or two every year at his home, which he shares with Sharon Peters, teaching them socialization skills and other dog things to prepare them for adoption. He has even helped some children get over their fear of dogs with his kind eyes, patience, and gentle ways.
The neighbors love watching Jasper and having him in the neighborhood.
Jasper will have his picture published in the ONEN newsletter and on the web site and will appear in all eblasts about lost and found pets. ONEN will honor this recognition by donating 57 pounds of dry dog food to the dog’s animal charity of choice. Jasper has decided to donate the dog food to a center for older dogs who have been given up by their owners.
Jasper and all other nominees received a grab bag of healthy snacks at the Neighborhood Meeting on May 23rd at First Lutheran Church.
The decision on who should be Dog of the Year was especially hard this year as there were some great nominees.
The other nominees were recognized at the ONEN meeting as well:
If you have lost a pet or found a pet in the neighborhood, please contact us at pets@oldnorthend.org to help spread the word.
Congrats Jasper! What a wonderful charity. How can we find out more about your charity? You are a wonderful dog and deserved to win! From daisy
Hi Lisa. Jasper’s grateful for the kind words! The rescue group he gave his award to is called The Old Dog House in Florissant. It’s a 501C-3. You can google the name and find them. There are 20 or more old dogs there at any given time, all from shelters around the state that wound up with senior dogs, wonderful old animals who had been loyal their whole lives and then were dropped off. Shelters have a really hard time placing such dogs, so Pam and Sindy would take in as many of them as they could (though only a small fraction, really, of the requests they got, as this old-dog dumping happens a lot more than any of us would have imagined). Almost all of the dogs live in their cabin with them, and they’ve built a huge L-shaped deck so the animals can hang out and enjoy the sunshine. They also have several pens with massive doghouses, and everyone goes for a walk in the woods together each morning, a pretty slow walk, because most of them aren’t very speedy anymore! Unfortunately, Pam died of breast cancer a couple of months ago, and Sindy is on her own, but all the dogs are continuing to get great care (though she won’t take on any additional old dogs for awhile, while she figures out just how many she can deal with alone). She’s got one dog that had bone cancer, they had the leg amputated and was told the dog had a year at best, and that was nearly four years ago and the dog’s still happy and active! She has another that’s 17 or 18 years old and still going strong (i think most of the rest are between 10 and 14 years old) . Thanks for asking. Obviously, I think this is a worthy cause! Sharon