Attendees enjoy 6th annual Help A Dog BBQ & Pet Festival
MALTA, N.Y. » Lots of local people and pets visited the Albany-Saratoga Speedway on Sunday for the sixth annual Help A Dog BBQ & Pet Festival.
The free pet-friendly event, presented by the Capital District Jeep Wrangler, is an annual fundraiser to help area pets while offering families a chance to celebrate their furry friends.
With nice weather all day, more than 1,000 attendees— both canine and human— were expected to attend the outdoor festival, said Capital District Jeep Wrangler board member Jennifer Stickney.
“It’s a celebration of pets and the people who love them,” Stickney said of Sunday’s event.
“Many of us have Jeep dogs and pets,” Stickney continued on why the Jeep club started this tradition six years ago. “We’re a local Jeep club that likes to get together and we’ll go off-roading, and do social events together also - and the other part is we love to give back to our community.”
Since the Help A Dog BBQ & Pet Festival’s inception in 2014, all proceeds have gone to the Scotia-based Animal Protective Foundation.
“CDJW was built in the Capital Region, and the APF is near and dear to our hearts,” Stickney said. “All the money from the raffles and the barbecue all go directly to the
APF to help the animals.”
The Animal Protective Foundation is dedicated to providing shelter pets love, respect and exceptional care until they are placed in their forever homes. The organization takes in and cares for more than 2,500 animals a year and has an open admission policy that ensures the animals are not turned away based on their breed, age, condition or circumstance.
“This is a great event to have. It gives a lot of people an opportunity to see what we do at the APF,” said volunteer Barry VanSteele, who was representing the organization on Sunday.
The 2019 Help ADogBBQ & Pet Festival featured more than 50 pet-related and nonpet related vendors, a large raffle, a grooming station, a dog agility course, microchipping and a Jeep Wrangler Show and Shine.
Dog owners also enjoyed showing off their pets and giving them a chance to make some new friends.
“We got her a few months ago and we want to see her socialize too,” 13-year- old Skyler Haley, of Ballston Lake, said about his dog, Sugar, a puppy Pitbull, Jack Russell Terrier, and Rottweiler mix, “and it’s a great event for that because there are so many dogs here.”
Pat and Jane Burns, of Scotia, brought their sixyear-old Boxer, Holly Noel, to the festival for the first time on Sunday. “It’s fun,” Jane Burns said. “There are a lot of different people and dogs, to give Holly a chance to greet and sniff other dogs, see how she does.”
The Burns family had a nice day out at the local event. “There’s a lot of things to look at,” Jane Burns continued. “There’s not too much in this area for dogs to do, so it’s something that we can participate in too.”