Greensboro’s Lake Oconee Humane Society will host its third annual Wine, Wags, and Whiskers event on Aug. 9 at Oconee Brewing Company in Greensboro. The event will be a dual celebration of the shelter and its 25 years of service.
LOHS Board of Directors President Barbara Gniewek said the Lake Oconee Humane Society was founded in 1999 as the Eatonton-Putnam Humane Society. The shelter became a 501c nonprofit in 2004 and moved eight years later to its current location eight years later.
The LOHS winetasting event will feature live and silent auctions and musical performances by Eric Dodd and Matt VanZant on OBC’s stage. This marks the brewery’s second consecutive time hosting the event.
As event coordinator of the Humane Society’s board of directors, Karyn Scott began planning the event about five months ago. Several local businesses boarded as event sponsors, including Pro Marine, Lake Country Storage, and Tim Greene Designs, with multiple others contributing items for charity auctions.
Additionally, for the past three years, the event has been made possible through donations by Rescue Dog Wines of Acampo, Calif., which contributes 50 percent of its proceeds to animal shelters.
Gniewek explained the Lake Oconee Humane Society approached Rescue Dog Wines after the Humane Society of Morgan County held a winetasting event several years ago.
“We did it the first year and sold out. We did it at a local venue, a store called Bend the Trend,’” Gniewek recalled. “We moved to the brewery last year because the store was too small.”
With the success of the LOHS fundraising event, more donors contributed gifts of wine and food items. Gniewek believes their generosity has helped the event to continue growing.
'We got into it because these very generous people with decent-tasting wine were donating, so it didn't cost us anything,” she said. “We had someone donate a lot of the food, which is heavily subsidized. So, it is a great time, especially with the music aspect.”
The Wine, Wags, and Whiskers event has helped the Lake Oconee Humane Society continue multiple community projects. With funds raised from the event, the shelter has held “trap-neuter-release” and low-cost spay and neuter programs.
“As a nonprofit, everything is [paid for] either through donations or grants,' LOHS Executive Director Diane Robinson said. “We depend on these events to bring in the money to support our work.'
Because the shelter is a nonprofit organization, Robinson considers it essential that it provide resources to pet owners in need.
Therefore, the Humane Society frequently holds pet food drives, where the items can be delivered via the 'Meals on Wheels' program. The goal is for us not just to take these animals and get them adopted, but what we can do to keep them in the homes,' said Robinson. 'We don't want people to surrender because of food or housing instability.'
The Lake Oconee Humane Society has become more involved with food distribution in the last year and typically serves Putnam and Greene Counties. With the increasing popularity of the nonprofit’s food distribution, the humane society has found more contributions from organizations within the community.
“We started doing it through Meals on Wheels because everyone driving for Meals on Wheels had dogs or cats. So, we started distributing, and they are distributing a lot now for us as well,” said Robinson. “Every place we go, we run out of food. It's extraordinary.”