By CECIL PERGRAM

Editor

The spirit of National Dog Day was in effect on August 26 at Red River Adventures when it played host to animal shelters from the counties neighboring the Red River Gorge.

Danielle Braden says she and her husband, Ernie started thinking about holding events for the people in the community about three years ago when she started the 22 Paddle Salute to honor Veterans and the fact that 22 Veterans commit suicide everyday.

“The ’22 Paddle Salute’ is a great way that we get to honor our Veterans and they get to enjoy the day,” Braden said. “This year we wanted to introduce another event because I thought we could manage two. So we introduced the Kayaks for K9’s.”

“If it wasn’t for our dogs me and my husband wouldn’t have met at Pet’s Mart and wouldn’t have got married. We thought about what we could do to try to support sheltered dogs because our dogs are rescues and we wanted to help the animals in the community. There are so many dogs in the Gorge that get rescued and need to find a home,” Braden said. “We decided to ask Shelter Sound and all the local shelters from Powell, Wolfe, and Menifee counties were invited with all the dogs they’ve rescued. Next year we hope to have even more shelters.”

“There are a lot of dogs in the area that need adopting and its about the time shelters get more recognition for all their hard work,” Braden said.

Braden says she hopes to make the event an annual occurrence in the Gorge.

“I would love to do this every year. It’s stressful but it’s worth it you get to see people dropping off donations and people telling stories about dogs and where they were rescued from, what kind of conditions they were rescued and how the shelters have been able to take some of these dogs from a bad place to a really good place and got them ready to where they are ready to find a home,” Braden said.