News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The DeKalb County Animal Shelter honoring its emergency responders this year with its 2025 Hometown Heroes Calendar fundraiser.
Animal Shelter Director McKenna Frazier said the calendar features local police officers, firefighters, school resource officers, military veterans, doctors, and nurses posing with adoptable pets. Frazier said the calendars have been a great way to honor hometown heroes while also spreading the word about pet adoption.
“We would not be here without all of our local community members and all of our hometown heroes,” Frazier said. “We now have a relationship with police officers and firefighters. They are more than willing to help us out and so we wanted to do something that included them also for our community.”
Frazier said many people have preordered the calendars leaving just a few calendars left for people to purchase. Frazier said the combination of pets and hometown heroes has been a heartwarming experience and has even led to an uptick in adoptions at the shelter.
“A lot of them actually really liked the pets that they were posing with,” Frazier said. “I think some of them went home and told their friends and stuff because a majority of the animals that are shown in the calendar have already been adopted so I think they were just spreading the word themselves so it was just a big team effort all around.”
Frazier said the shelter has done calendars before with just pets but the calendars did not sell as well as the shelter thought they would. Frazier said each calendar is $10 and all funds will go to covering the shelter’s expenses.
“All the money will be going to the animal shelter whether that is funding the spay and neuter services you know, paying for those surgeries so that animals are able to go home or just buying dog food and cat food which you can imagine how much of that the shelter goes through each month,” Frazier said. “So it will all be going towards taking care of the animals that we have here.”
Frazier said calendars can be purchased and picked up at the DeKalb County Animal Shelter. Frazier said with the calendar’s big success they will likely do the hometown hero calendar again next year.
