Humane Society Visit, End of 4-40

Last Friday we went to Humane Society to drop off our huge collection, and meet a few people. I had emailed back and forth with the volunteer coordinator previously, and she wanted us to meet some folks in Marketing. They even arranged a volunteer photographer to take pictures of Henry.

Here is Henry with Dino the socialization mascot in front of the donation center. Dino had hip replacement done by the good doctors at the Humane Society, and of course Humane Society covered the costs too. Henry never had close contact with big dogs before (they are right about the same size, 75 lbs), so Dino was quite a new experience for him. Dino's foster dad let Henry walk Dino for a bit and give him treats. Henry recorded the experience on the 4 Weeks, Forty Blanket blog.

Next to the donation center is a door that leads to the surrender counter. Every time we went to donate someone went into the surrender door with a crate. If you are thinking about bringing a new pet home, please consider the shelter.

To wrap up the 4-40 project, we reached the target on Monday when we picked up from three separate locations. A woman lives in Los Gatos mountains offered to meet us in town, so we met her in the high school where her child was in band practice and which Henry will be attending in three years. Then we went to a home in Almaden for our second pick up. This was through Henry's post on lmtrade, a Yahoo Group I started years ago for Las Madres families to buy/sell/trade household items. A woman responded to Henry's email and offered a big bag of blankets and towels. In the afternoon, we went to our third pick up of the day in Los Altos. This was through Henry's post on a Freecycle group, another big bag of blankets and towels. I think these people really like Henry.

Back in July I told my mom about the 4-40 project, so she collected a bunch of stuff from her friends and neighbors. On Tuesday we went and picked these up. Our final total was 55 blankets, countless towels, sheets, and lots of toys. I'm very happy with what we've accomplished, very happy with how Henry managed the project and made his summer meaningful.