Thompson's West End was bright and blue and festive as pups of all shapes, breeds and sizes brought their humans to celebrate CHA's First Annual Strut Your Mutt 5K.  Park Campers had a front-row seat to the race and  were treated to a wave of blue as pups and humans displayed their blue colors.  
Doggies were outfitted with their own Strut Your Mutt bandanas & their humans displayed matching  T-shirts. The event, the first for our shelter was a huge success!!!! We look forward to next year's event.  We received great positive feedback from everyone and great suggestion to get us started with next year's planning.  Among them are expanding the prizes to include an award for Most Funds Raised Medal & a special Top Mutt Red Bandana, which of course comes complete with Bragging Rights for a year, a ballot box so participants can vote on best dressed mutt, and many more - rest assured, we are listening!   

Recently, CHA was made aware of a local person who could no longer keep these dogs due to a death in the family. These 5 beagles, were used strictly as breeding dogs for hunting. Living on a wire floor cage most their lives, they are very unsocalized and unfortunately have skin/ear problems. All appear to not even know what grass and dirt feels like under their paws. However, they are in very good spirits and we hope with some one-on-one human contact they will soon be able to be placed in loving homes. We will continue to address their health issues and work on socalizing them.
Allowed to be free to run for the first time in their lives, our rescued Beagles experienced their first freedom walk. In some of them, the joy is clearly visible in their faces. In others, you can see the fear, apprehension and reservation. 
Even though these beagles shared a common misfortune, they actually have never met each other face to face, with the exception of two which were kenneled together. 
During their freedom walk/run, their emotions changed from fear, uncertainty, reservation to joy and even incredulity at feeling grass under their feet for the very first time. It was really great to see them change right before our eyes. All their tails were down and stiff when they first went into the play pen. Slowlly they began to regain their confidence and those cute tails with the paint brush tips started to go up.
One girl in particular experienced many emotions at once. Her tail was down, but wagging in circles trying to go up. You could see her trying to make up her mind as to how she felt. She kept running towards our photographer giving her quick licks and then promptly running away again.
We all had tears in our eyes as we went along this roller coaster of emotions with these little gals. It breaks our hearts, but at the same time we are happy because we know they now have a chance to just be pups and to be loved the way every dog deserves!
 We welcome any trained volunteers to come and spend one-on-one time with these girls! 
Also, if you would like to donate to help us with the costs of rehabilitating these sweet girls, you can do so by clicking on the donate tab above. You can also send your checks to directly to CHA.  Stay tuned...these stories are just beginning and now we work to make them all have happy endings.

The board members of the Chequamegon Humane Association (CHA), volunteers & staff have been tiredlessly working  for years  toward  acquiring and/or building a new shelter to house the residents of CHA.  It has been and continues to be both a frustrating  and extremely rewarding process to say the least.

Progress may appear to be painfully slow, not for lack of effort, but just simply because these things take time. We had a lot of hurdles to overcome. A couple of locations we had selected didn't work out so time was lost in those efforts.  For the most part, it seemed like the new shelter was never going to happen. The apparent calmness reminded us of ducks, "resting" in the water.  What we don't see is the constant paddling beneath the surface.  Which brings us to today, all that paddling is finally reaching tangible results.  We are happy to report we have acquired a new piece of property to house the new Chequamegon Humane Association. We have secured the necessary zoning permits and contracted with local firm C&S Design & Engineering, Inc.  to help us with the design and construction of our new shelter.  In the coming months we expect to break ground and begin construction of the new shelter. We of course will keep you all posted.

In other words, we are happy to report there are brighter days ahead for the people and animals at CHA. This new facility will provide a pleasant and safe environment for people to work in and volunteer and a humane environment for the animals who will temporarily reside there.  

Our current building with all it's shortcomings has given us all it has to give. We just fix and patch and trouble shoot issues as they arise and pray the building has one more winter to give us before we say good-bye to it one last time.  The worst kept secret in all of Chequamegon Bay is how badly and desperately we need a new facility.  

Of course, we cannot do it alone. Just like we haven't survived these years alone in a vaccum - we have made it because of your support and generosity.  We're going to need your support now, more than ever.  Achievement of this goal will be a team effort.  Rest assured, when we are done, our community will have a facility we can all be proud of. We will have a facility you will  want to visit, work in, adopt, and/or volunteer. 

Know that we are more energized than ever. More determined to see this through and now that we can see our efforts begining to give fruit, we will continue to push forward to make this dream a reality. So hang in there with us just a little bit longer as you have for all these years.

In the meantime, if you want to make a donation towards the building fund, you can send your check to CHA indicating Building Fund in the memo field.  You can also make a credit card or paypal donation  here through our website or on facebook by pressing the donate button. You can also help us by participating in many of our upcoming events like the Power of the Purse, May 7 or the Strut Your Mutt, May 21.
Thank You from the bottom of our hearts!