Carnamah, Western Australia 6517
“Santa paws is coming to town”
Wow, what a year!
From creating a website that highlights gorgeous places to walk your dog the MidWest, to lobbying for an official dog park, AND running a sizable community event, the Blues Walkies concept took off like a robbers dog!
www.blueswalkies.com
Since publishing the Blues Walkies site in April of 2023, we’ve had 2.5 thousand visits! Majority have come from Australia, but we’ve also had many hits from Canada, the UK, America, France, Germany, Singapore, and even a visit from someone in the Republic of Korea! This is incredibly exciting and further demonstrates that people all around the world value their dogs.
Making content for this platform, i.e., finding out who provides pet friendly accommodation, who are the highly regarded pet groomers in the area, where are the vets located, who makes quality dog treats etc.., lead to meeting high calibre people who really love dogs and their community. Spending time with these characters and highlighting their dog-related-passions helped improve my mental health tremendously.
Many thanks you legends!
CA DOGGY PLAY SESSIONS
It all started with this basic flyer pinned to community notice boards and uploaded to facebook.
Meeting up on a regular basis at the local footy oval between 5pm-6pm for our furry friends to run & sniff has been a wonderful social experience for dogs and humans alike. We kicked the idea off in August and it went from 3 dogs & 4 people turning up on the very first session, to some nights where there were 12 people and 8 dogs attending. It’s been fantastic!
Locals and out-of-towners rocked up.
Visitors staying at the caravan park with their dogs rocked up.
Tradies & contractors staying in Carnamah who brought their dogs with them rocked up.
People without dogs rocked up!
Those who attended exchanged phone numbers for extra dog catch-ups and made arrangements for informal Doggy Day Care sessions. Local kids and teenagers came along to enjoy the safe, fun, social environment of happy dogs. We created a Sunday Session doggy play schedule to meet the needs of those who just couldn’t make it on week-day-evenings. And even a romance blossomed between two attendees of the CA doggy play sessions. (Awwwwww.)
The Carnamah Lions Club generously donated dog toys and locals gave up their old, plastic, sand-pit pools to create Doggo Water World for our fur babies on those ruddy hot days when its still 38 degrees at 5pm! (Dogs still want to run around even on scorching days.)
From August to December, we saw 60 different people attend a CA Doggy Play and we met A LOT of dogs, so we’re really looking forward to cranking up these sessions again in 2024!
CA Doggy Play session when we set up Doggo Water World for the beasties to jump and splash around in. THEY HAD A BALL!
Blues Walkies teamed up with local business One L of a Feed to bring the joy of coffee & dogs together.
The Sunday Session schedule piloted in 2023.
Blue enjoying a One L Cafe Pup Cake!
The official Blues Walkies Event flyer designed by Year 6 student Heidi.
BLUES WALKIES COMMUNITY EVENT
Kids are the best ambassadors for drumming up enthusiasm for a concept. Their motives are pure and they have HEAPS more energy than adults do. Students at Coorow Primary School really got on board with the importance of walking your dog to improve your mental health by running the Blues Walkies Event at the Koobabbie Precinct. 68 people and 15 dogs attended. It was a scorcher of a day, so massive THANKS to the locals and visitors who turned up! We were thrilled that local MP Melissa Price promoted the event on her social platforms. Cheers Melissa!
The Blues Walkies Event team - Year 5 & 6 students from Coorow Primary School. Click on the button further below to see more photos and learn more about the event.
SUPPORTING THE COMMUNITY
Following the huge success of the Blues Walkies Event, Coorow Primary students took it a step further by creating Doggo Support Bags full of dog kibble, gourmet treats, pet toys & accessories, human treats + contact information to local mental health organisations. These were lovingly created to give away to local families and residents finding it tough to stretch their holiday budget to cover dog food & treats.
The smiles generated while assembling these bags were as big as the grins on those who received the bags.
Ready to roll out the Blues Walkies Dog Support Bags to the fur babies across the MidWest.
Just some of what the bags contained. What isn’t seen here is a big bag of kibble, teeth cleaning chew sticks, and a pencil case full of dog toys & accessories.
Shanté with the Doggo Support Bag she created for the community.
Lobbying for change
After seeing how successful the CA Doggy Play sessions were in Carnamah, particularly with residents from Coorow and Three Springs travelling all that way to attend, it was apparent that surrounding towns would benefit greatly from having a safe place for dogs to be ‘off-leash’ to stretch, run, sniff, and play. Blues Walkies therefore encouraged adults and kids alike to voice their opinion to the Shire of Coorow about the need for a dog park.
Following the noise that was made in regard to this, it was thrilling to learn that the Shire has plans to establish a fenced-in dog park in the next 18 months. A more recent demonstration of action by the Shire was the installation of more dog poo bag dispensers around the town.
Cheers to the Shire of Coorow for their support!
Here are the Year 5 and 6 students from Coorow Primary School emailing local Councillors to request their support for installing a Dog Park in Coorow. This is not the first time these socially-aware students have expressed their ideas for improving the community. Prior to this they submitted surveys to Melissa Price - Member for Durack - revealing their thoughts and ideas for progressing Coorow. See Ms Price’s speech about their efforts via the button below.
What’s in Store for 2024?
Blues Walkies will continue to add more great places to walk your fur babies on the website.
We’d also like to run some Starry, Starry, Night sessions where we all rock up to the CA footy oval between 8-9pm (on those super hot nights) with our doggies wearing lit-up-dog-collars, and let them run around under the stars in the cooler temperature.
Toward the end of the year we’d love to set up a Santa Paws photo experience where your dog can get a photo with Santa!
But in the meantime, keep taking those blues & beasties for a walk - it helps everyone in the long run.
Merry Woofmas,
Herby & Blue xx
Let us know about other great dog walks you’ve gone in the Mid West at blueswalkies@gmail.com