This year’s PAWS Cedar Dog Jog will also offer virtual option

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

This year’s PAWS Cedar Dog Jog “Quarantine Edition” will take place in a couple of weeks, but there’s also a virtual option being offered for those who may hesitate being part of a group event.

“We’re offering kind of a hybrid,” said Julie Taylor, director of the PAWS Humane Society in Charles City.

“It gives people the option to do the 5K on their own. They don’t have to do it on Sept. 19 necessarily, and they can post pictures or a little video clip of them doing it on our Facebook page, to share it that way,” she said.

People and their dogs can go to the Sept. 19 live event and walk, jog or run the route along the river and by Central Park. Or they can walk the same route some other time. They can even do their own 5K somewhere else, Taylor said.

“People from out of town – past dog adopters who want to support us and get the T-shirt – can do it in a different community and do their own kind of 5K and share a picture with us,” she said.

Everyone who registers by the deadline of Sept. 10, whether they intend to participate in person or virtually, will get a dog bandana and a T-shirt in their size. People can also register after that deadline, but the fee is $5 more and there is a chance the size of T-shirt they need won’t be available.

“We always purchase extra T-shirts, because you can register that morning the same day as the event, but it’s kind of hard to guestimate T-shirt sizes,” Taylor said.

The annual Cedar Dog Jog is PAWS’ largest annual fundraiser.

“But it’s also just a really positive morale booster for the organization and it’s really nice because we do get a fair amount of people who have adopted from us who come back for this event,” Taylor said. “It’s kind of a way to reconnect with some of those dogs we knew in the past.”

People can register online by clicking the link on the PAWS website at pawscharlescity.com, can pick up a brochure and registration form at various locations around Charles City, including PAWS animal shelter, Hy-Vee, Snap Fitness and the YMCA, or can print out a registration form at the PAWS website and mail it to or drop it off at the shelter.

For those who do choose to participate in person, social distancing will be requested and everyone is asked to wear a facemask during the registration period and at the start of the event.

“Once it starts if people want to keep on their masks that’s great, but I think people can space out enough that it won’t be a problem,” Taylor said. Most people who participate take the route at a leisurely pace, so it should be easier to maintain separation than if it was a competitive race with runners bunched together.

Postponing the Cedar Dog Jog from its usual June time and forcing different options hasn’t been the only impact of the novel coronavirus on the animal shelter.

“We have a little bit of an increase in the ability of people to foster animals, because people are home more, so that’s been a plus,” Taylor said.

Pet adoptions increased in the spring and summer, possibly as people were working from home and decided they would have the time to bring a new pet into their lives, she said.

Nationally there had been talk that some people who had become unemployed might be surrendering their pets because they couldn’t afford to keep them, but Taylor said she didn’t see evidence of that here.

“You never know why you’re getting animals if they’re brought in as strays, why people abandoned them, but we didn’t have people saying it was because of financial reasons,” she said.

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PAWS Cedar River Dog Jog
Saturday, Sept. 19
• Same-day registration/starting location – 7:30 to 8:15 a.m. at the end of Leland Avenue by the concrete slide near the Cedar River.
• Walk/Jog/Run starts – 8:30 a.m.
•  Dog and puppy microchipping –  9:30 to 10:30 a.m.
•  Route: 5K on the trail along the Cedar River to the suspension bridge; across the bridge to a loop around Park Drive and Chautauqua Avenue; back across the bridge and down Clark Street to Joslin Street, to Blunt Street, to Main Street; southwest on Main across the Main Street bridge; then to and across the the pedestrian bridge back to the trail on the north side of the river; then back to the starting point.
•  A one-mile route will also be available, and watering stations will be provided along the routes.

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