What’s better than a bunch of puppies in costume?
A festival of costumed puppies that are also being trained to help people suffering from more than 100 disabilities.
Canine Companions for Independence is holding its first Halloween festival at Strawberry Fields in Mattituck this weekend, featuring several food and wine vendors, live music, a spooky pet parade, apple bobbing for dogs and a canine costume contest with prizes. There will also be a Chinese auction and a 50/50 raffle, which already has a pot of almost $400.
Fair-goers are encouraged to bring their own dogs along – in costume, if they’d like to participate in the costume contest.
“I’m hoping we can bring the community together for a really great cause,” said Josh Marino, a Mattituck resident and Canine Companions volunteer who is helping to organize the event.
There is no entrance fee for the fair, which lasts from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., but donations will be accepted throughout the day by canine companion dogs carrying donation buckets.
Saturday’s “Howl-O-Tails” fair will begin at 11 a.m. with a dog walk around the perimeter of Strawberry Fields. Live music will be provided by Who Are Those Guys, and vendors will be selling puppy gear and Canine Companions merchandise.
“When I talk to people about assistance dogs, they immediately think of seeing-eye dogs,” Marino said. “I wanted to bring some more awareness to what Canine Companions is doing for the community.”
Canine Companions is a national organization that trains puppies to help a wide variety of disabilities, both physical and developmental. The organization’s dogs don’t work with the blind, but with anyone with a disability who can demonstrate that a canine companion would help change their quality of life.
“I’ve gotten to see the difference that one of these dogs can make in the life of a person with a disability,” said Pam Recchio, president of Long Island’s Canine Companion chapter. “It’s like night and day.”
The organization is in desperate need of volunteers to raise and train puppies for the organization, Recchio said. “We have such a long waiting list for the recipients to get the dogs, and we have only about 30 puppy raisers right now,” she said.
Anyone can volunteer to be a puppy raiser for the organization. Volunteers raise golden and labrador retrievers over the course of a year and a half, attending classes twice a week with their puppy to help teach commands that will eventually be used by the puppy’s future owner.
“A lot of people think they couldn’t be a puppy raiser because they don’t think they could give the dog back,” Recchio said. “I used to be one of those people. But once I started volunteering, it became a no-brainer. These dogs are changing people’s lives.”
After a year and a half with their puppy raisers, the dogs are sent to one of Canine Companion’s six regional training centers, where they learn the rest of their commands and get ready to be matched with a disabled individual. Only 40 percent of Canine Companion’s puppies actually qualify for “graduation” – being matched with an individual.
“They have to be almost perfect,” Recchio said.
But the support of the Canine Companion community, from fellow puppy raisers to the organization’s trainers, makes the process smoother and more rewarding. “We always say that we come for the dogs and we stay for the people,” Recchio said, laughing.
This weekend’s event at Strawberry Fields will only be the second fundraising event the Long Island chapter has held on the North Fork. The first one was held last year at Martha Clara Vineyard in Jamesport, and it was “a huge success,” Recchio said.
Like last year’s event at Martha Clara, the Howl-O-Tails fair will also have presentations with the organization’s dogs that show the impact of Canine Companions on the lives of the individuals it works with.
“I am always blown away by some of the testimonies and stories I hear from people who’ve received the dogs and how it changes their lives,” Marino said.
