Good Deeds.

Hello again everyone. I wanted to talk about an awesome thing that some friends and I recently discovered and that a lot of Colorado Mountain College students have been doing.

Here in Steamboat Springs, there is an animal shelter for stray pets found around Steamboat. At the animal shelter, they help the animals get healthy, since they were very malnourished living on the streets, and then put them up for adoption. The great thing this animal shelter does, is let people come and take the dogs for walks. You don't even have to be interested in adopting, you can just take them out for the fun of it.

I have some mad alergies to dogs, so I've never had one growing up, but I've always wanted one. This is an awesome way for me to play with dogs without having to worry about all their allergens getting on my bed and things in my room. I can take on out for the day and walk it around and then drop it back off before I head back to the dorms. Also, four legged pets aren't allowed in the dorms, so if you're a dog lover like my friend Corey, it's a great way to still have fun with them, even though you can't actually keep it in the dorms.

The first time my friends took out a dog, I was unfortunetly in class, but when I got out, I got to meet one of the coolest dogs ever, Amber. She was found on the streets like most of the animals at the shelter, and was still really skinny. She is a retriever hound mix and about 10 months old, although she was really big already. When I got out of class, Corey and Chelsy were out behind the dorms building playing with her. After hanging out there with Amber for awhile, I went to the animal shelter with them to drop her off. They said that at first she was really scared to jump in and out of the car, but by the time we dropped her, she was already a champ at it.

After that first experience with Amber we decided to check out the other dogs on the animal shelter's website. Hopefully that link works for you, but the website is a great place to go check out all the animals before you go there, and you can even request to walk a certain dog you saw on the site.

The next time, a few days ago, just Corey and I went to animal shelter to try and get Amber again. When we got there, she was already being walked, so we got her sister Ashley. However, when we were walking out with Ashley, our friend Ryan was walking in with Amber, and they let us take her out too. We decided to walk them next to the river, just down the street from the animal shelter. If you're familiar with the Steamboat area, we started walking them at the park near the new library, just off Lincoln. On the walk, we ran into a lady biking who recognized Amber and Ashley from when she walked them, and thought it was really cool how we were doing that. Later we ran into some friends who wanted to see them and some girls who thought it was great that we were helping the animal shelter dogs.

Walking dogs is a great way to spend an afternoon while helping out some less fortunate animals. Also, if you're part of a club here at Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus, walking dogs can be a great way to get community service hours for the group. Since we walked Amber and Ashely, we haven't gone back yet, but I got a feeling we'll be going very soon.