THUNDER BAY— Goods and Co. hosted a Dog Days of Summer event in its market on Saturday.
The event featured a selfie dog photo booth, professional pet photos by donation and roughly 11 vendors, who were largely dog-friendly and provided dog-related items and services.
Lanna Pattison, one of the vendors, was working for Northern Designs Co., a small business that opened around five years ago and has collaborated with Goods and Co. in the past. She said the establishment reached out to them to join the Dog Days of Summer market.
“We designed t-shirts for this event as well as we do local work in Thunder Bay, where we do pet portraitures, so we take the image of your dog and we generate a portrait and we apply it to clothing,” said Pattison.
Pattison said it is important to involve pets in these events and the portraits because they’re family members, loved dearly and they just have “a place in everybody’s heart.”
“It’s just nice to see that the pets are welcome and you can wear your pet on your clothing as well as we have pet apparel, so we can get everybody dressed up as the entire family,” said Pattison.
While they don’t have anything else currently planned for the summer, she added that they also tend to participate in fall and Christmas markets, where they create holiday and personalized special gifts.
“Our place is always a dog-friendly environment, so you’re welcome to bring your dogs at any time to Goods and Co.,” said Emily Madeo, Goods and Co.’s house representative, who was in charge of the event’s vendors.
“But yeah, so we wanted to hold it to show that all dogs are welcome here… There are a lot of dog vendors in Thunder Bay as well and we wanted to showcase all of their talents and all of their work.”
Not many places are dog-friendly and really hold dog events, added Madeo.
“We definitely do have events running throughout the summer and throughout the entire year, so we could possibly pop up another one of these because it’s going really well so far. I’m enjoying it,” said Madeo.
Dana Gaudreau, a volunteer with the Northern Reach, was also raising awareness for the entirely volunteer-based rescue network at the market.
“It’s a little slow today, but it’s been good,” she agreed.
“There’s been lots of dogs coming through here, so we get to meet them and give out our information and talk about us.”
Gaudreau said they have gotten a lot of volunteers from these kinds of events.
“We’re always looking for fosters or people to help with fundraisers or transport or even just picking dogs up or cats up at the airport and bringing them to their fosters,” said Gaudreau.
With the current fire situations, she added that they’ve had a high increase in animals coming in that need temporary fosters, where they’ve provided respite and facilitated many more transports down to Southern Ontario.
These dogs and cats, mostly from northern fly-in communities, are fostered locally before being vetted and adopted out through the network’s southern connections and partners.
“We currently have two new communities under fire evacuation in the north and so we’re always looking for fosters and volunteers,” said Gaudreau.
