Students fashion quilt beds for lucky dogs

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This article was published 29/02/2024 (939 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some needy pooches at the Brandon Humane Society will be sleeping more comfortably this week after the organization received a donation of about a dozen handmade beds from the Grade 7 home economics class at Riverheights School.

Two friendly canines — Star and Hero — were the centre of attention Wednesday morning when Humane Society employee Cody Carter-Squire and shelter manager Tracy Munn stopped by with their furry friends to accept the hand-sewn quilt beds in the pit area of Riverheights School.

More than 20 students and staff had a chance to interact with the two dogs, give them hugs and attention, and listen to a short presentation by the Humane Society on their program. In turn, the dogs seemed to enjoy checking out their comfy new sleeping arrangements.

“We do get donations from the community,” Carter-Squire said, “but this is the first time I’ve had something like this happen.”

Home economics teacher Celine Cramer reached out by email earlier this year to let the Humane Society know that the class had made some dog beds and wanted to donate them. Carter-Squire took it one step further and suggested that, as a thank you, they bring the dogs to the school and allow the kids to meet a few of the animals that they were putting so much time and effort into caring for.

“This is called our sustainable dog bed project,” Cramer said on Wednesday morning. “When they’re done their final sewing project, the students have the option of contributing to an extra project. We use all of our scrap fabrics from other projects and we cut them into five-by-five-inch squares. And we quilt, and we learn how to do a quick quilt.”

The students then sew a back to the quilt and stuff the resulting bed with small leftover scraps of material.

“It’s a totally sustainable project,” Cramer said. “I try to have a zero-waste classroom, so anything that we use we try to repurpose in some way.”

The beds were made by students from two different Grade 7 classes over the last two years, with other students coming in after last year’s class to finish the project. Cramer says many of her students already have cats and dogs at home, so they came up with a plan to give back to the shelter and donate their time.

“We have the stuff to use, or else it goes into the garbage. We might as well use it and put it to a good purpose.”

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