For the first time in several months, a live music event took place in Manhattan.
Purple PAWS Foundation hosted the first ever Beers, Bands, and Barks event on Saturday evening at A&H Farms. Live music, good eats, beer, and dogs were the highlights of the night. After a year of planning Megan Johnson, Assistant Director at Purple PAWS, tells KMAN that the support from the community was overwhelming.
“It’s amazing. I’m speechless. After me putting all the hours in this to make sure that everybody was going to be safe in the first place, that we had enough area to make sure that we still do social distancing, but also make sure everybody still has a good time while we’re here,” says Johnson.
Susan Clasen, Purple PAWS founder, tells KMAN the event was planned over a year ago, but has been a roller coaster ride for planning. She mentions that three bands were in attendance as well as two food trucks. Clasen says the event was a success thanks to community support.
“It means everything, it really does. We’ve had a rough year with COVID, of course like everybody knows. We’ve had to cancel just about every fundraiser we’ve had, so this is a first for 2020. It’s hard to believe that because it’s September, almost the end of the year, but it means everything to us. We had a great turn out a lot of support from this community, they were fantastic,” says Clasen.
Johnson says that Purple PAWS means so much to her. She talks about the impact of the foundation not only on her, but the entire community.
“It doesn’t take one person, it takes a village, really. When it comes to volunteers, the adoption events, our fosters who are willing to open there homes to be able to have dogs come. Since we don’t have a shelter, that’s the only resource we have, you know, are fosters. Especially since we are pulling a lot of dogs from death row, it’s basically coming from there to where they are going to be euthanized, to a lovely home,” she says.
Presha Emmert, a new cat fosterer adds that it is fun to watch the animals’ personalities come out. Emmert tells KMAN that Purple PAWS is a great organization to work with.
“Purple PAWS organization is wonderful. They do a lot of good work, work with a lot of fun people, good people. And you know they are here to save animals, and that’s the whole point,” says Emmert.
Purple PAWS plans to hold another event, “5K Trails for Tails” event in October.
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