Love Animals? Come to the 2009 Pet Rock Festival (Sun, Sept 13)
Posted by Drew.
On Sunday, September 13, 2009 from noon-5pm (rain date: Sunday, Sept. 20) Worcester will again host the 11th year of New England’s largest animal protection event: The Pet Rock Festival. Bring your companion animals and your family out to this fun awesome animal-welfare event. Be sure to stop by the VegWorcester booth!
The Pet Rock festival started in 1999 when Charlene Arsenault saw an A&E Investigative Report on the strong connection between being cruel to humans and being cruel to animals. She was horrified by how cruel humans can be to other animals. So she formed a working group and founded the Pet Rock Festival.
Here’s how she describes explains the festival’s history:
During the program, they played videotape that had been discovered. It showed a group of punky teenagers from Kansas who had taped themselves running into a family’s backyard where their pet dog Scruffy was tied near his doghouse. The boys shot at the dog as he was jumping toward them to be patted …they cut him with razors…cut off his tail…eventually putting him in a bag doused with gasoline, and lit him on fire. All the while laughing and inserting commentary – zooming in on the dog’s face as they scoffed “owwww, look at the poor thing … ”
I was horrified by what I saw. I wanted to drive to Kansas and confront the teenagers and the prosecutor who defended them (saying that it was “just boys being boys”).
In a fit of tears, I contacted Jeannie Hebert, owner of Hebert Candy Mansion and fellow animal lover. She tried to calm me down. It didn’t work. The idea for a festival wasn’t established yet, but it fused an important relationship.
…
We named it Pet Rock, borrowing the name from my band (also called Pet Rock), which has existed a year longer than the festival itself. It confuses some people, but the band name was first.
It was just too perfect a name for this festival… After months of toiling in the conference room at the Hebert Candy Mansion (and everywhere else), we held our first Pet Rock on Aug. 29 of 1999. It was a smashing success. 4,000 people came through the gates. We had five great bands, great weather and an incredible response. We raised a good amount of money (close to $4,000) for the first year – all of which was divvied up between a breed rescue group, the Sterling Shelter and the Animal Legal Defense Fund (who helped prosecute the perpetrators in the Scruffy case).
I couldn’t save Scruffy, or even have the chance to tell those horrible idiots from Kansas how I felt, but hope that in some way this annual benefit can help and fight for the animals who still have a chance. We’re doing it for the Scruffys everywhere … fighting in behalf of those who were killed, for all those who have no homes, for those who are treated poorly or those in need of care.
This year the Boston Vegetarian Society is organizing an all-vegetarian food court and VegWorcester will have a booth to distribute free copies of our 2009 Veg Dining Guide to the Worcester area. Come out and stop by our table!
We need more people to sign up to volunteer at the VegWorcester table. The event is noon-5pm, so we have two volunteer shifts available: 11am-2:30pm and 2:30-6pm. If you can help out for a few hours, email drew@VegWorcester.com or leave a comment here.
September 2, 2009
Tags: pet rock Posted in: Animal Rights, Events
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