One of our favorite events of the year strolls into Dearborn May 16 when the Friends For the Dearborn Animal Shelter holds their 4th Annual Mutt Strut beginning at Ford Field Park at 9 a.m.

What’s nice about this walk is that the actual 1.8 mile strut talks place through the West Dearborn business district. This means that for a day our downtown is actually bustling with foot traffic. And if you own a business you might be able to leverage a few sales from passersby walking with their dogs.

It is the type of event our downtown Dearborn needs to see more of. Take a look at what downtown Plymouth does on a regular basis. That city’s entire spring/summer if filled with outdoor events that get people downtown. Tell us that doesn’t help business? I am puzzled why the Chamber and City do not do more of this here. But we digress.

In addition to the walk, the Mutt Strut will have a number of dog contests, including a “Barking Idol” contest, a Best Howler competition, where you can see if your BFF can carry a tune while competing with other doggie howlers. There also will be doggie massages or “paw-dicures”, err, pedicures.

The Mutt Strut will be held rain or shine since all weather is good dog-walking weather. What all of us can do to take part is to make a pledge to a dog taking part in the walk.

You can do that by visiting www.DearbornMuttStrut.com . The Web site also provides easy registration and on-line pledging capability, where you can create your own Web page to ask for donations.

All proceeds from the event benefit the Friends For the Dearborn Animal Shelter, supporting Shelter operations and community-and animal-related programs. The Friends is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. For more information about the organization, visit www.Dearborn-Animals.com

The Mutt Strut is sponsored by Dearborn Family Pet Care and there will be a number of fun activities for the whole family at the Ford Field Park. Some of the highlights include a Doggie Health Zone, Milt Wilcox’s Ultimate Air Dogs (dog dock diving that you have to see to believe), Dog Games and Contests, an all-day Adopted Dog Birthday Paw-ty, and much more.

If you have additional questions, please call 313-943-2697.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 7:29 am and is filed under Around Town. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.