Mansfield Animal Shelter's Celebration of Animals Takes the South Common

The hosted the on Saturday to great fanfare.

Ana Villella was with the animal shelter since the beginning, and also volunteered at the event and most of the previous Animal Celebrations.

“When we started it was a lot smaller,” she said. “We did it just to raise funds for the shelter.”

Though the event started with humble beginnings, it has grown to include a good number of activities, vendors and pet-based services. Vendors from all over the area came to help bolster the event. They had 12 vendors, four cat rescue groups and six dog rescue groups.

Villella said that since the shelter is run through a nonprofit organization, the town doesn't pay for the shelter's expenses. They use funds from donations, a general fund and this fundraiser.

“Basically all the proceeds from [the event] goes to pay for our monthly bed bills, which is our highest expense,” Villella said.

The entire workforce of the shelter, along with those who helped out at the event, are volunteers (save for Animal Contorl Officer Jeffrey Collins). Past animal celebrations also helped pay for the earlier this year.

The celebration’s main activities started on the South Common at 9 a.m. to numerous people pouring in to see the adoption board, pet accessories and services. The shelter also organized a table for selling various donated bakery items as well as books, board games and toys.

The celebration featured an adoption board showing some of the animals available for adoption from the shelter.

“At minimum we get five to ten people who come to the shelter a few days after saying ‘Oh I went to the event and I saw a picture of this animal and I want to meet the animal,” Villella said. “Not all of them turn into an adoption, but at least we get ten people, maybe more, that come in based on what they see here.”

Vanessa Garufi, another volunteer at the shelter, said she helped organize this year’s celebration. She said the planning for this year started in June.

“Which was really a little late, we should’ve started a little earlier than that,” she said.

Despite the late start, many residents (and pets) came to the event to support the shelter and maybe get a little relaxation in. There were two masseuses on call for the event; one for humans and one for dogs.

“I think it’s going really well,” Garufi said towards the end of the event. “Our bake table is doing really well, I haven’t chatted with any of the vendors yet, so I don’t know how they’re doing, but the book table is doing really well too.”

Though the end of the event was scheduled for 2 p.m., it went on an hour and a half past that.