By Mikayla van Loon
It’s just one short month away from the ultimate human and canine cross country challenge as Animal Aid’s Adventure Dog returns to the Yarra Valley on 2 April.
Known as Australia’s largest dog friendly obstacle course, the event hosted at Wandin Park Estate draws crowds from all over the country to raise funds for the rescue and adoption service.
The four kilometre course sees competitors and their four legged friend take on all conditions under foot with mud, jelly, snow, and a chalk colour run.
Animal Aid Communications and Engagement Manager Elle Ammann said the event is on track to be one of the biggest in its five year history.
“Last year we raised $84,000 so we’re being quite conservative with our $80,000 goal. I’m hoping to well and truly exceed last year,” she said.
“We’re on track to have more participants than last year, [where] we had 850. So this year we’re hoping to have 900 plus participants raising over $80,000.”
For one of Adventure Dog’s regular competitors Aaron and his dog Brandy, the course is a fantastic opportunity for people to come together.
“It’s a fantastic, feel-good event,” he said.
“I was happily surprised at how many like-minded people came together to support Animal Aid.”
Aaron has chosen to fundraise to help the lost and homeless animals at Animal Aid.
“This will be our second year at the event, I love dogs and my heart breaks for those without a
home. Every little bit helps, so Brandy and I hope to reach our fundraising goal.”
As a not for profit organisation, every aspect of what Animal Aid does has to come from the community to ensure the health of the animals and this funding will contribute to that.
“All the staff, all of the food, all of the medical, everything the dogs receive is through donations from the community or people using our services or involving themselves at our events,” Elle said.
“It will feed the dogs, it will desex them, it will vaccinate them, it will do any special surgeries we need. It’s not unusual for a dog to come in who has a sore hip who needs some surgery on that or dentals are really common.”
In just one year Animal Aid can help around 6000 pets find homes and get the medical or training attention they need to be rehomed.
While every year can be challenging, Elle said the end of 2022 and the start of this year has been particularly difficult with more and more animals being surrendered.
“We’re having more surrenders than ever before. We have dogs sitting around for longer because we just have such a high volume of them…[and] there isn’t the number of people looking to adopt right now.
“The huge volume of adoptions we had over Covid means we’re having this lag now where everything’s a little bit slower, we know it’s going to bounce back but at the moment, our length of stay is more than what it should be because the interest just isn’t there yet.”
Animal Aid had reached capacity for dogs and cats in February, with around 50 dogs being housed and the most number of cats seen in the Coldstream facility for the last six years.
Elle said many of the people who have surrendered dogs in particular haven’t necessarily wanted to but have been left without choice.
“They didn’t have the support they needed during Covid to have that dog in their home. They couldn’t go to dog training, they couldn’t give it the socialisation.
“So they don’t want to give it up because they had fun with the dog for two and a half years but it’s more like ‘we adopted a dog thinking that we’d be able to do this, but for two and a half years, we didn’t have the support to make it work’.
“People are trying hard. It’s not like the public’s doing anything wrong but they just didn’t have what they needed.”
With an extension of the Coldstream facility’s kennels nearing completion, Elle said it will help house more dogs and Adventure Dog funding will ensure the best care.
“The more funds we have, the more we can do every single time so our new facility is going to be amazing.
“The level of care the dogs receive is going to be extraordinary. But as well as that, the funds we receive from Adventure Dog are going to help us care for more dogs.”
Registrations for Adventure Dog are open until the end of March. To donate or register go to www.adventuredog2023.raisely.com
