Boca Goes Shopping to Benefit Animal Welfare

With BlogPaws fast approaching, I've been taking Boca on as many outings as possible to prepare for our road trip next month. We'll be driving over 1500 miles through the southwest, and our trip to the conference is being generously sponsored by Open Farm. Many of my choices in life are made with animal welfare in mind, and what I feed my dogs is no exception. Open Farm is the first Certified Humane dry dog food on the market, which means the standards of care for the animals are much higher than a typical factory farm. As someone who tried to reduce the number of animal products in my own life through a mainly vegetarian diet, these standards are important to me. 

Boca, of course, has no idea that her dog food is better for farm animals, just as she had no idea that our recent shopping trip to Soul Dog Thrift Store was benefitting animals and communities in the same southwestern region we'll be traveling through! Soul Dog recently completed a spay-neuter mission sterilizing over 50 dogs on the Native American reservation. This kind of work is so essential in rural communities to help curb pet overpopulation and improve the lives of the animals there. 

We loved that the thrift store is dog-friendly, and met up with a friend who volunteers both for Soul Dog Rescue, and Paws on the Ground Colorado. She was one of the protestors present the day of our "Holiday Miracle" when the pet store owner agreed to visit an adoption event with our spokeswoman, the impetus for his decision to begin offering rescue dogs in the store. I was so excited for her to meet Boca, who made herself immediately at home in the store charming customers and begging for a bite of another volunteer's sandwich.

Behind the counter at Soul Dog Thrift store are pictures of many of the dogs they have saved. I bought my dad a t-shirt to wear that advocates for spay-neuter and found several things for myself as well! It is a tiny store jam-packed with treasures. Boca enjoyed posing for pictures as well as poking around on her own. Check them out if you're in the Denver area!

My coolest find was this Fossil messenger bag - an absolute steal at only $5 - which will be perfect to use at BlogPaws. Boca is confident that it has room for plenty of treats. We have several more fun outings on the calendar, including a visit to the Rocky Mountain Pet Expo this weekend and a play date with a couple of Boca's potcake pals from Humane Society of Grand Bahama. It's hard to believe that our big road trip is only a little over a month away!

This post is sponsored by Open Farm as part of our Road to Blog Paws series. You can visit Open Farm on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.