Seventeen-year-old Hannah Morrison has loved animals for as long as she can remember.
When an eighth grade “Call to Action” project included a community service requirement, Morrison immediately knew she wanted to work with animals. “Originally, I was going to volunteer at an animal shelter,” Morrison recalls. “But all of the shelters I found had an age minimum of 16, and I was only 14 at the time. So I talked to Mrs. Regan, our English teacher, who told me that our librarian, Mrs. Isaacson, volunteered for an organization called Dog Days.”
Morrison immediately researched Dog Days and discovered that the organization takes dogs from kill shelters and hosts events where the dogs can be adopted. “In the United States, about 670,000 dogs are euthanized every year,” Morrison explains. “It’s not because they’re un-adoptable dogs that are violent or aggressive or have health issues. A lot of them are just in shelters that are overcrowded and don’t have the resources to care for them. So, people can come to Dog Days and adopt a dog there because there’s usually about 100 dogs at each event that would’ve been euthanized.”
In fact, Morrison herself adopted one of her three dogs from Dog Days. Shadow has now been a part of the Morrison family for three years.
Now, Morrison has taken it upon herself to help the rescue dogs in an even bigger way. At the Hamburg Fair starting today and continuing through Sunday, Morrison will be running a meatball cart where all of the proceeds benefit Dog Days. “I have a food cart that I’ve been doing for the past three years, and I was going to do an event at a store plaza just selling hotdogs and donating the money to Dog Days,” she says. “But when the Hamburg Fair contacted me asking if we were coming back, I was like ‘oh, maybe I could just use that.’”
Morrison is hoping raise about $2,000 for Dog Days, so be sure to stop by her meatball cart this weekend to grab some delicious food and benefit a great cause.
The next Dog Days event is on Oct. 20 and 21 in Cheshire, Conn. For more information, visit www.godogdays.org