Make a Difference This Weekend

If you're lucky enough to have a dad or be a dad, then I hope you'll be celebrating Father's Day this weekend, as I plan to do this evening and tomorrow evening. And if you like your weekends to be a combination of fun and then also feeling useful, I've got that other part for you -- make a difference in a dog's life by donating a couple of hours to helping in the search for Leo!

Here are some ways to do that despite the fact that we don't have a specific fliering session planned at this time:

FLIERING DOUGLAS PARK

When & where: for this weekend’s fliering, we aren’t naming a meeting time and place, but we’re asking anyone that is able to help at a time convenient to you to please view the map, linked from the menu at right, to see the highest priority area for fliering. This area is the Douglas Park area, and only a few very small sections within the community have already been covered. Getting it all covered is critical. After you flier, please email me the areas you are able to cover so that I can mark the map, and the next team of volunteers will know what areas are still uncovered.

Production of fliers: we regret that this weekend, we aren’t able to offer the flier supplies to volunteers, and we thank you in advance for adding the labor and/or cost of flier production to the contribution of your time to help Leo! If your printer is currently out of ink like mine is, don’t forget Office Depot, FedEx Kinkos and Staples for printing unless you have a relationship established with a different printer altogether. Also critical is the weather-proofing of fliers, which can be accomplished by any of these options: sheet protectors, large ziploc bags, or clear contact paper.


CANVASSING DOUGLAS PARK: If you’d be happier talking to people, this is another really important task at this time! We have good to reason to believe that Leo has been in this neighborhood, but we need to
1) figure out if he’s still in the area,
2) let people know who to contact if they see him,
3) find out who can offer their property as a site for a feeding station,
4) inform people that they should NOT chase him or call his name, but just call the number, and
5) ask people to help circulate the word about Leo to their friends and neighbors.

For this job, please have plenty of the business card size notices and the ¼ page fliers. Use the Douglas Park area map to know where to canvass. If you encounter people that believe they may have seen Leo, some of the questions to ask are: when & where was the dog seen, what was the direction that the dog was moving from and to, how fast did he seem to be moving

FLIERING OTHER AREAS: We also believe in fliering other areas where people congregate and then go to their homes in all pockets of Arlington County and Northern Virginia, keeping in mind that Leo can move on. Here are just a very few examples of places where you could go and hang fliers or possibly put 1/4 fliers on car windshields in parking lots:

Parks, Trails & Shelters: http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/ParksRecreation/scripts/parks/ParksRecreationScriptsParksParks.aspx

Libraries, most or all of which have bulletin boards: http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/Libraries/about/LibrariesAboutHours.aspx

We think area pools are a good place to spread the word via fliers, and this is a source of info for them: http://arlingtondpca.homestead.com/POOLS.pdf

Shopping areas with stores like Giant, Safeway, Harris Teeter, Bloom, Whole Foods or CVS – with parking lots that turn over throughout the day; the ¼ fliers on the windshields of these cars spread the word everywhere. Do you know those shopping centers or can you find them on the internet in area code 22204?

If you want to cover one of the areas yourself today, you could post a comment and others can see that you're doing this, and they can decide on other options. I'll recieve your message as an email if so and I may be able to help from a distance (but I can't be on site today).

Here's hoping for an exciting next blog entry -- happy hunting!

Nancy Despeaux
TesterDesp@aol.com