On November 2, there will be an event held at Highland Hills Park called Barktober Fest, organized by Charlotte Weghorst (11). There are many activities that will be at this event and although the event is for dogs, it is also kid friendly.
Weghorst gave a brief overview of the event: “We’re gonna have a pumpkin paw painting, spin the wheel for different treat types, giveaways, a photo booth where you can put your dog in a costume, a scavenger hunt, and we have coloring for younger kids.”
The Barktober Fest has brought in a lot of donations to help fund the local shelter. Weghorst has asked different organizations to donate and it is going well leading up to the event.
“We raised about $500-600 now for a local shelter. We are still waiting to get back to some people, so it might end up being $800 eventually, but we will see how that goes.”
Weghorst also created and currently helps to lead the Animal Club at Highlands. The Animal Club meets every other week on Tuesdays and does several different activities related to animals of different kinds.
“At the beginning of the meeting, we go through what we need to go over in the meeting. Towards the end of the meeting we’ll have a little section about an animal. Like the other day, we did the mortal jellyfish. Another week, we did baby penguins.”
The club also offers one-on-one experiences for students. Some students have the opportunity to go to animal related places to learn more about different types of animals.
Weghorst hopes to put out more advertising for the club so that students have the opportunity to bring in domestic animals for the club.
“We hope to have people give an advertisement soon about people bringing in their own pets. I thought it was really important to sort of get that one-on-one interaction with domesticated pets, such as dogs and cats.”
She added that she has been suggesting finding animals to help around the school during school hours. These animals would help students and faculty throughout the day.
“Hopefully we will be using therapy dogs in here for midterms.”
Weghorst has worked hard to put out advertisements for these two events and hopes to give students a good opportunity to not only learn about animals all around the world, but also make festive events for animals and kids around town.
