Expressing our gratitude and appreciation

At the end of every year, CAPS always wants to publicly thank all those who support us and our mission of No More Homeless Pets. Like last year, we have so many to thank that this article will continue next week. First and foremost, we want to extend our sincerest gratitude to the residents and businesses in Churchill County. Without their continued support, we would not have been able to keep the shelter doors open for over 27 years.

This year, our caring community has supported us by attending our fundraisers: Bark in the Park (May) and our first-ever Murder Mystery Dinner, “Next of Kin” (Oct.); buying our Happy Endings calendars; and showing great generosity on our Walmart Saturdays. CAPS absolutely could not continue to exist without your participation.

We are most thankful for those individuals and families who adopted dogs and cats, giving them the forever loving homes they deserve. CAPS next gives a thundering Paws Applause! to the following individuals and businesses. (The thanks given don’t follow any particular order, for all are equally important.)

We thank Lahontan Valley News for giving us a weekly voice to reach a wider audience and public service ads. Without this, many people wouldn’t know about CAPS and what we do.

We send our gratitude to Fallon Veterinary Clinic and Lahontan Valley Veterinary Clinic for their continued support in helping us with our spay/neuter program, SNAPS. To date, over 1915 dogs and cats have been spayed/neutered through this program and others, greatly reducing the euthanization of numerous, unwanted litters in the future. We also thank them for the wonderful care given to our shelter guests when needed.

We are so grateful for the individual who has funded our spay/neuter program for the past two years. This benefactor wishes to remain anonymous, but that generosity has lowered the number of dogs and cats euthanized in Churchill County every year.

We send our gratitude to the Churchill County Commissioners who are always mindful of our needs, especially in a tough economy. Thanks also to the Churchill County Library for giving us a room to hold our monthly board meeting (on the first Tuesday of the month and open to the public).

Our gratitude goes out to Kim Lamb, photographer extraordinaire, for his wonderful portraits of our animal companions that grace the pages of our 2014 Happy Endings calendar. He also helped with the calendar layout, making it the best one yet. We also thank all those businesses that advertised in the calendar, for you make producing it possible.

Our first Murder Mystery Dinner, “Next of Kin,” couldn’t have been the success it was without the donation of talent and time from the following individuals: Art Mallory, Churchill County District Attorney; Ben Trotter, Churchill County Sheriff; Glenn Perazzo, Churchill County High School Drama Teacher; Brooke Mori, a local talented dancer; Sherry Nash, Churchill County High School sophomore; ACC (AW/SW) Jack Lazenby, NAS Fallon; Mandy Bowman, CAPS volunteer; Teresa Summers, CAPS executive director; and CAPS board members Sharon Peters, Betty Duncan, Pauline Friedrich, Rita Hand and Ken Wiley.

We are grateful to Susan Henderson, former owner of Flower Tree Nursery, who gave so generously throughout the year: a tree raffle four times a year with all proceeds coming to CAPS, the use of Flower Tree’s beautiful garden for photography sessions of our calendar models and selling our calendars and fundraising tickets.

We thank Eva Gross of Mutts, etc. who yearlong generously donates to the shelter, including all proceeds from “Pictures with Santa,” which she sponsors in December. We also appreciate that Eva not only sells our calendars and fundraiser tickets each year but also has a donation can for CAPS.

Our hats go off to Shannon Miller of Maggie’s Playhouse and Doggie Day Care. With her expert help and guidance, our shelter dogs learn manners and how to get along with other dogs, thus making them more adoptable.

We are so appreciate Gerry McFall, former owner of The Family Pet Connection, who donated to the shelter throughout the year and also sold our fundraising tickets.

Along with the above upstanding folks, we bestow kudos to following fine merchants who also sell our calendars and/or auction tickets: The UPS Store, Red Zinnia, Jeff’s Copy Express and Flower Tree Nursery.

Stay “tuned” for next week’s column devoted to more gratitude and appreciation.

This week’s article was contributed by Betty Duncan and Teresa Summers.