Grassroots of Tarboro

For the August T2S event we wanted to do the Dog Days of Summer (A BYOD event, bring your own dog) and Moonlight Madness (where the downtown businesses stay open until 10pm.)

Now we're wondering if these were good or bad ideas.

These ideas need a lot more discussion. Your opinions and ideas are welcomed. August 9th is right around the corner.

One of Daphne’s great gifts is to be able to see the potential meltdown in a situation—it’s one of those things that makes her such a good insurance agent and such a good mom. We came home from tonight’s meeting, and she let loose some of the ideas she felt were a little too negative for her to throw out at her first T2S meeting. For example, having a dog show in August would:

A) Be Too Hot

a. We touched on this idea, a little, but add to the idea of hot dogs running around the fact that the pavement and concrete of the square may well be too hot for the dog’s poor foot pads

b. Misting Tents/Wading Pools—Hopefully, not all dogs are this way, but our dogs really don’t seek out water—whether in the form of spray or pools….Let me add that the idea of our dogs having to use pools that have previous been used by who-the-heck-knows which dogs who may or may not be carrying who-the-heck-knows which diseases just doesn’t sound sanitary. And, wet dogs smell bad. Always J

B) Be Too Tough to Control

a. By the time we set up the misting tents, sales tables or vendors, there’s not a lot of space left for a number of dog owners to be trying to contain their dogs on leashes. A person with a dog on a leash is a good bit wider than he is by himself. Besides—dogs are FAMOUS for wanting to prove heir dominance. Sounds like fights, agitated dogs and RISK. Many of these dogs will not used to coexisting with other dogs.

b. The venue is near the street—how many dogs like to chase cars?

c. It’s not the soild waste I’m worried about. Think about the kids in the Crocs and flip-flops…in the wading pools----Eeeewwwww!

d. Speaking of the kids—do we really want even one little child to be even a little bit nipped by an overly excited (or hot or cranky) dog? Is that really the kind of publicity T2S needs?

C) Not Support Our Original Mission of Having Fun and Attracting Business Downtown

a. People with dogs won’t be shopping at the downtown businesses—they just can’t go inside the shops with their furry friends in tow…

b. Many people are scared of dogs or are just not dog lovers. Having a pack of dogs downtown might sounds like a bit too much for either the cat lovers or the dog-neutral. We certainly don’t want to turn people away from the event at all.

Now, here’s an idea that might just possibly a) make everyone happy and b) preserve the basic theme while, hopefully, increasing the traffic downtown:

We’ll have a dog show, all right—with pictures! People can either submit their pictures via email (say, up to 3 per dog) prior to the event or bring them by on Saturday. We’ll compile a big board (or three) with all the contestants’ pictures, owner’s names, and anything cute they might want to say about the entrants and, the public will be encouraged to come down and vote for their favorite dogs in all the categories. The super thing about allowing the public to judge is that everyone who has an entrant will encourage everyone they know to go downtown, at least for a little while, and vote for Fido!

Potentially, this idea is a big win-win! We get to take advantage of the “Dog Days” theme on which Becky has obviously spent a heck of a lot of time and energy while minimizing the potential risk to no more than that of a normal Second Saturday. All the other work that has gone into this Second Saturday is still “go.” We can still help the shelters, encourage dog/cat food donations, and drive loads of traffic downtown. This plan also allows us to keep the morning portion of the event open much later than would be possible with actual dogs downtown—the pictures can (and should) stay up all day long! Since the winners wouldn’t be announced until the evening, we would also be driving traffic downtown after 6pm!

Please understand that we will definitely support and help with whatever decisions the group makes, but we wanted to present an alternative that, hopefully, captures or expands all the rewards while eliminating all the extra risk.

Couldn't agree more with Eric and Daphne. Too hot, too small an area, etc. Let's concentrate on attracting more people not more possible trouble!

Sounds like planning a "Kids Fest" but asking people to leave the kids at home. Maybe you should consider changing the theme. Petsmart lets you bring your dog but not a pet themed organized gathering? Makes no sense.

To "What?" who chose to be anonymous, yes it does sound like maybe we should change the theme. That's why we are having this discussion. Ordinarily we can rely on weekly meetings but in our limited time frame, having a problem with the theme itself requires immediate attention and we have a problem with the theme.
I didn't wait until the Friday morning meeting to talk with downtown businesses and hit the streets today to chat with as many as possible. I needed to determine how many businesses would consider being open until 10pm for Moonlight Madness. I also asked for their opinions on having people bring their dogs downtown to the Courthouse Square. From the businesses' perspective, people with dogs do NOT go into the stores, so that aspect of the event would do nothing to support them. They were also concerned about pee and poop and people who are not good at controlling their dogs.
As for the Moonlight Madness, it was noted that we have many non-retail businesses and empty store fronts that would need to have something on their sidewalks to create the traffic flow and the necessary atmosphere of an evening street fair. Judging from the previous events, the evening crowd was a lot fewer than the daytime and may not be worth it for the stores to stay open for Moonlight Madness in August (December maybe, but not August).
In my opinion, both of the ideas that we started with 1) The Dog Days of Summer and 2) Moonlight Madness have some major problems that may be best to avoid at this early stage of monthly event planning.
From my standpoint of problem solving I think we need to keep it simple and make it good.
1) We already have food vendors who will set up and sell food all day & into the evening.
2) We have music people who will entertain us. Some performed before and will come back. Some are coming for the first time.
3) We have vendors willing to sell their crafts and some willing to promote their non-profit groups.
4) We have residents who enjoy coming to 2nd Saturdays and will come back again.

Can we quickly change the theme to something like "The Beach Comes to Tarboro", for everybody who can't go to the beach?
The dog-related groups who have already agreed to come can certainly set up their tables and let us know about spaying and neutering and animals available for adoption. The Top-Dog Canine Academy can do their demonstration at 10am, We can still have the Dog Days of Summer, but we'll put more emphasis on SUMMER than on DOGS.
This will be the 5th event that I've helped to organize in as many months and although we are doing some last minute changing from the original idea, I think we will find much fewer problems and end up with a better event for everyone involved.
What I learned from the July event... the event itself was very nice, it was enjoyable for everyone and could easily be repeated, but what we really need to work on is getting the word out to more people IN TARBORO.
We need to print thousands of fliers and put them into the hands of thousands of town residents.
Let's keep it as simple as possible, put together a fun summertime event and focus our energies on drawing in a larger crowd.
I'm sure that many people would love to go to the beach this year but can't for one reason or another... let's have a beach party on the town square.
What do you think?

We totally understand where "What?" is coming from, but we're thinking about the BIG picture: the safety of all involved (human or canine) and the reputation of the event.

While it would be great to have an event that was designed for our pets to have fun (say in a nice air-conditioned mall, or something), it's more important, to us, that the humans involved have fun in a safe environment. We can still accomlish all the major goals for the August event--fun for all, safety, helping the dogs-- while also supporting our local businesses. After all, there is no Petsmart downtown, and we want to drive traffic to our downtown businesses, too. It's our hope that an event that supports dogs without encouraging them or their humans to be placed in a potentially dangerous situation will be a success on all fronts.

I love the "Beach Theme," along with some great beach music even if it comes from a DJ. I'm back from my trip to Arizona and ready for August's 2nd Saturday. See you at the next meeting!

I talked with a large number of business owners and residents and it was nearly unanimous that while promoting dog care and dog welfare groups was a good idea, having a large number of live dogs on the downtown sidewalks was a not so good idea. It was determined that a BYOD event might be better held in Riverside Park as originally discussed, and we may consider that at a later date when the T2S events have outgrown the downtown area.
I'm glad that we got this straightened out quickly because August 9th is right around the corner. Fun things are already filling up the schedule and it looks like we'll have another full day of fun, food and music.
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