The first meeting of the South Georgia Dog Scouts went wonderful! Thank you to all who attended!
Jill Pease is our new Co-Leader, so we thank her for her willingness to volunteer.
April:
The April meeting will start out at Wellspring in the field. We will have our new agility equipment in place by then and we should have a great time playing on it. We will work there for a while and then retreat to Edie's house to watch the Dog Scout Test video. While there, the dogs can play in her secure fenced yard.
We also anticipate starting our game program which will have great doggie prizes for the winners such as Kong toys and Doolie bag carriers!
May:
The May meeting will be held at the Lenora Church Dog Park. There are hiking trails and agility equipment. Bring your picnic stuff and make a day of it!
June:
July:
In the event of rain, we will postpone until the second Sunday of the month.
We will have some agility games at Wellspring. We will probably be inside due to the heat for most of it.
We hope to have a dog scout movie to show on certification. We will be doing memory stones with our pups paw prints.
There will be a canopy open in the agility field for shade and a doggie pool full of water for splashing fun.
You will need to bring a small tub of vinyle patch cement obtainable from hardware and home supply stores and a box with a solid support bottom and a removable plank or cutting board to transport your wet memory stone home. You may also leave it to cure at the training center and pick it up the following week if you prefer. This will be a trial run of a future fund raiser for us to see if it is workable.
Feel free to bring a BBQ if you would like and let me know, I will bring some hot dogs. (seems appropriate!)
I look forward to seeing you there. Don't forget cool drinks!
August:
Lake Jackson BBQ and Swim day! We will be roping off a picnic area right on the beach of lake Jackson with BBQ grills and all the fixings! Bring Long training leads to keep the dogs leashed while they swim and enjoy the lake and trails!
September:
Community Service Badge Day! Those with TDI Certification will take a trip to the local hospital to visit and make the sick feel better. Those who do not yet have their TDI, will join a park clean up team to make Covington more beautifull.
October:
Octoberfest at Helen, Georgia and Anna Ruby Falls Hike. More details as we get the facilities lined up, but we hope to have a package deal at a dog friendly hotel in the area for those who want to go up on Saturday to enjoy Octoberfest. The hike will be to the top of Anna Ruby Falls on Sunday.
During our March meeting we decided to initiate a plan to educate Covington, Conyers, and the surrounding area about our organization.
We will design and implement a plan to contact local businesses to determine if they are pet friendly.
We will visit them to encourage pet friendly activities and provide window stickers to those who are interested that let their customers know that they are pet friendly locations.
We will further list those pet friendly locations on a seperate page of this website!
Once we get this underway, we will contact the local news media to encourage them to run an article about pet friendly locations in our area.
March:
We planned our meeting agendas through October!
We devised a contingency plan for meetings on rainy days. We will contact local businesses that have covered facilities: Salem Methodist Church and Linda's Riding Academy, to see if they will host our meetings on rainy days. Edie will handle this contact.
We will investigate dog friendly activities and badge requirements for the meetings. Jill volunteered for this responsibility.
Edie and Jill will meet this week to set up a bank account for the troop so that the meeting fees can be managed. We agreed to use the fees for game prizes, office supplys, flyers, and admittance fees as necessary.
All members will be responsible for getting the word out about us! Edie will email Jill an electronic copy of the 4-way flyer to distribute to local businesses.
We will look in to arranging through meetup.com to contact interested dog scouts in the area. Edie will handle.
Edie will set up a free sign out book shelf in the training center so that dog scout members can sign out training books that they are interested in reading.
Meeting fees will be set at $5 a month for meetings with a discount for those who wish to pay the meeting fees up front: $25 for 6 months and $50 for a year.