GR camp participants learn about dogs

A week-long summer camp helped attendees learn the ins and outs of animal care.

During the Sweetwater County Board of Cooperative Educational Services Rescue Camp at the Red Desert Humane Society, 10 children learned how to care for dogs and cats.

On Friday, camp attendees were busy preparing the dogs for an adoption event, society board member Joyce Fett said. This year, the dogs were taken to the Rods and Rails Car Show, which took place in downtown Rock Springs Saturday.

Students were busy packing boxes and deciding what needed to go along with them for the event and what really wasn't important. Items packed were adoption vests, water and bowls for the pets and hand sanitizer, sunscreen and bottled water for the humans.

Throughout the week, leading up to the event, students learned about the shelter and how its employees and volunteers take care of the cats and dogs.

The camp kicked off with a tour of the humane society's shelter. Then, the students met the dogs they were taking to the adoption event. Students also met with a rescue worker, a dog agility trainer and a veterinarian.

"The kids seem to really enjoy it and I think they are learning a lot," society manager Kaci McClure said.

Fett said camp attendees also learned the importance of having pets spayed or neutered. She said children need to learn how quickly cats and dogs can become overpopulated. With this in mind, the children also visited the Rock Springs Animal Control Shelter, where they learned about euthanization for animals that are not adopted. The next day they toured and cleaned the Rock Springs dog park, which the kids were not particularly fond of.

Although the children had access to the cats, due to the location of the adoption event, none of the cats were taken to the adoption site.

Five of the children who attended the event were from Green River, the other five were from Rock Springs.

Green River student Brady Young said the dog he was assigned to was an 11-week-old labrador named Clyde. He said the dog was already spoken for, but was being taken to the adoption event in case the adoption fell through.

"He's really excited about everything," Young said.

One thing Young noticed about Clyde was how quickly the dog learned, but how easily it forgot what it had just learned.

Young has two dogs at home and has been taking what he has learned from the camp and applying it to his dogs at home.

"I finally get them to stay," he said.

Jayden Toman, another Green River student, said one of the most important things she learned was how to tell from a dog's body language whether or not that particular dog is friendly.

She said if a dog has its head up, its tail is wagging and doesn't seem tense it is probably friendly. With two dogs, two horses and a hamster at home, Toman isn't new to animals, but she was happy to learn new training tips for her dogs.

Skylee Gomez, a Green River student, has a rabbit, a hedgehog, three chickens and three dogs at her home.

"I've been going home and working with them," Gomez said about her dogs.

Gomez said the class has also open her eyes to what's really going on around her. Before she would have never noticed a stray animal or people who breed animals for sale, but now that she's aware of it she sees it.

Toman said she will leave with the feeling that even if an animal is a stray, it still deserves to find a good home.

"They've come a long way from the beginning of the week," Fett said.