The Washington County Humane Society puts on great fundraising events each year. From their Mega Rummage Sale to their Festival of Trees, every event is fun and engaging. Coming up in October, you can join them for their Oktoberfest fundraiser. It's going on Saturday, October 12th, 2024 at the Washington County Humane Society. Tickets are on sale now at https://www.wchspets.org/oktoberfest/.

It's going to be a lot of fun, and they're going to be supporting a lot of pets, as you're about to hear. And with that, here are 15 minutes on the Washington County Humane Society's Oktoberfest. With Joe Poczkalski on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.

Joe, thank you so much for joining me today here on the Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz podcast. So the Washington County Humane Society, you guys do an awesome job of putting on fun and engaging events. You've got your mega rummage sale, I was at your Barks and Brews event that you had at Sandy Paws, and the, the Sandy Knoll Park.

You do the Festival of Trees event around the holidays, and of course you have Oktoberfest coming up, so you get to be around pets all day, and you get to come up with fun fundraisers. Do you have the coolest job ever?

It's wonderful to have pets come down the hallway because we just took in a serious case or something like that or walk back at lunch and see all the pets we have. It, it never, it never gets stale, I'll put it that way. Always interesting, I wear a lot of hats at the shelter, so, if we're short staffed and we need extra hands to walk dogs, sometimes I'll hop in and do that.

We're a pet friendly office here at Epic, so we, We're hybrid today while you're here in the studio, so there's no pets here today, but usually it's filled with dogs. Love to hear that. Um, so, can you give us a bit of history? So, Oktoberfest has been around for a while, right? How long have you guys been doing that?

We only do two of our major farmers at the shelter, so we love that we can just set up where we work.

What is it like? What do you guys do at that event?

He does a lot for us at Barks and Brews as well, and for Festival of Trees too. He really has an impact throughout our entire fundraising year, so shout out to him for sure. He sets up, a wonderful array of tasting. So tons of breweries and, local, local places, national and regional beer.

Give to Jeff, and then he gives to us, and we, will allow that sampling to happen, at the shelter during the event. It's tons of fun.

35, yep. Right, so, and you can get those tickets on, Your website,

Sometimes we get, the, the local, I think it's River, River West and West Bend?

So, really exciting. And German music. German music too. Yeah, the River City Blaska Pels, they've also been a staple of the event too. They'll be by and playing their German hits too.

There's no shortage of lederhosen in this area. I don't think so. In the October months. Um, and so is there anything like new or special this year versus kind of some of the other years in the past 23 years?

We're very excited. We are building a outdoor beer garden, so they'll have an outdoor space for people to relax and drink and just catch some night air too. And then, we're just trying to ramp up our games and activities during the event. We have a wine poll, we'll have a beer poll. That you can participate into.

We'll have our, our staple wheel, wheel game spin the wheel kind of prize thing. Sure. And then hammer slogging. We'll have cornhole. And then, just a lot of walking around, sampling and visiting with pets too. So, which one are you better at? Hammer, slogging or, cornhole. I didn't grow up playing Hammer Schlog and I grew up playing cornhole.

Yeah.

Can you explain, I just learned about wine pulls at a different charity event that I was at, but can you explain to somebody what a wine pull or a beer pull is and how that works?

Sure. For, for what you're getting, potentially getting. Yeah. You, uh, you pay to, step up, there's a, kind of a wall of, of hidden objects behind it. So you, you break open, a cubby, pull out a bottle of wine or a case of beer we're doing, or a six pack of beer. And that, bottle of beer or wine is, is guaranteed to be, worth at least what you paid for it, if not way more.

Okay, excellent, yeah. So you could pull something really cool.

Here there's no losers. No losers. You walk

Our rummage sale was, was a record year, last year's Festival of Trees was a record year. So continuing this trend is extremely helpful. We can guarantee that we can provide the staff to be there for these animals in need, be there for our community members to provide those programs and services to them, so it's absolutely essential that we that we knock these events out of the park and that people participate and feel generous.

So, we have a great dependency on our giving community, absolutely.

Right. I assume there's a lot of expenses like that, right?

So, can you tell us about your volunteer needs and how maybe people can help out if they're in the community and want to support?

So, but we have that impressive amount of volunteers helping out at all of our fundraisers, daily at the shelter, walking dogs, cleaning. So those Those, volunteers are absolutely critical to what we do, too. We don't have the staff to be walking, you know, 30 dogs every morning. Oh yeah, yeah. So, someone needs to help out and do that.

And when people step up, it's really humbling to see how many people step up and sacrifice their weekends, their holidays, It's incredible. We're, we're absolutely dependent on our volunteers as well.

Oh, really? We have a lot of space in the back. The shelter people don't see. Yeah. We have kennels and cages back there too for pets that are, Getting medical care or waiting to have room free up on the adoption floor. Sure. We could be really full up if we need to be.

Animals are work. They're a lot of work. Yeah, exactly. . So for those who maybe can't attend the event coming up for Oktoberfest, what are some other ways that they can support the Washington County Humane Society, either during Oktoberfest season or even beyond?

It's always fun to be in the shelter and see the animals, experience our events, so it's a ton of fun, but of course people have plans, other traditions, we understand that. Giving during this time, at the end of the year, we have a big push to collect as many donations as we can from our community. Propping us up for the next calendar year.

So giving online or in person. , just visiting too. We have a beautiful, beautifully renovated building. So we always encourage people to come by and see that and, and see the level of care we're putting in. Just that word of mouth is very helpful too. People will tell friends and family and those people may come by and adopt or visit or donate or buy something at retail, what have you.

Or attend an event.

That's right. We're hoping for a lot. Yes, exactly. Joe, thank you so much for coming in, and thanks for all that the Washington County Humane Society does for the pets that need care in our community. Thanks Fuzz for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks again to Joe Poczkalski of the Washington County Humane Society for joining me on this week's episode of Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.

I hope you're all able to make it to Oktoberfest. It sounds like it's going to be an awesome time, a paw some time. Whoa, yeah, pet puns. Hey, speaking of great times, if you know of other great times happening in and around Washington County, please tell me about them. Or if you know about positive people or organizations, That's what this show is all about.

You can email me fuzz at fuzzmartin. com. That is fuzz at fuzzmartin. com or go to fuzzmartin. com slash guest. New episodes drop on Tuesdays. You can listen on Spotify, Apple podcasts, music. I like to download the episodes from my RSS feed from fuzzmartin. com and then. I put them on my swimming headphones and I listen to them in the pool in the morning.

I don't actually listen to my own podcast, I listen to other podcasts, because I'm not that full of myself and I already listened to this episode while I recorded it, because I have ears. Hey, I'll talk to you next Tuesday, right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. Thanks for listening.