Woofstock Stays Cool Despite Heat

The hot and humid weather was fit for neither man nor beast; nonetheless, there were plenty of both to be found on the Branford Green Saturday at the fourth annual Woofstock music festival, which raised woofing funding for the Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter despite the stifling conditions.

“It’s cool down here, this is the place to be today,” said Branford Fire Chief Tom Mahoney, pointing to the water below him from his perch atop the festival’s dunk tank. It wasn’t long before an errant hand (brandished by a giggling child) ushered him underwater once again.

The fire chief wasn’t the only one to seek soggy sanctuary that afternoon. First Selectman Jamie Cosgrove, pictured above, enjoyed several pleasant plunges in the dunk tank as well, while many of Woofstock’s furry attendees sought relief from the heat with a soak in one of the festival’s plastic swimming pools.

“We made sure we had extra pools here, and extra water, and ice, and tents, because we wanted to make sure people were keeping cool throughout the day,” said Laura Burban, director of the Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter.

The precautions were about more than just comfort. As Dr. Deborah Yarrow, the owner of the Mill Pond Veterinary Hospital, explained: ​“Overheating for dogs is a problem because they only sweat through their feet and tongues, so keeping them cool is an imperative, because people don’t understand how hot they get, and they get dehydrated.”

With this in mind, the festival’s annual Woofwalk was cut short from its usual two miles to one.

At its halfway point, hosted on the lawn of the Stony Creek Brewery, pets and their owners indulged in an extended halftime break, which gave them time to rehydrate and relax in the shade before taking off again.

Entrants in the hippie dog contest, meanwhile, waited until just before the judging began before donning their costumes.

Normally, explained one owner, the dogs would spend the entire day cruising the fairgrounds in their groovy getups; but today it felt safer to postpone the preparations.

As a final safety measure, volunteers from the hospital wandered the crowd to keep an eye out for any dangerously parched pooches. They also gave out free collapsible water bowls to anyone who needed it.

The Hippie Dog contest, heat and all, drew a bevy of costumed dogs who took it all in good spirit. 

Here the judges look over the ​“Costume Contestants”. Carefully.

Here’s the top dog.

Izzy came in next.

And who could forget Sonny & Cher? They took third place.

One pair found a perfect place to observe the festivities. 

Animal Giving 

“We knocked it out of the park,” said event chairman Ken Engleman, as he assessed the day’s events. According to Engleman’s report, the festival appears to have exceeded its fundraising goal $20,000 — a significant increase compared last year’s total of $14,000.

The donation will be a welcome bonus for the shelter, which Burban says is ​“always in kind of a crisis mode for money, because there’s always the next medical emergency.”

Though Burban estimates that this year’s turnout was about the same as last year’s, the festival still had more registered walkers, more gift baskets, more vendors, and more sponsors than ever before.

It also had more volunteers.

Engleman added that the pawprint sale — which allowed donors to get a pawprint emblazoned with the name of their choice stenciled into Town Hall Drive for $100 a pop — also attracted many more buyers than it had in the past. Engleman dedicated his pawprint to his own two dogs, Jersey Girl and Diamond Jack, both of whom are rescue dogs.

Engleman attributes part of this success to the festival’s expanded online presence, which included a Facebook event page and a brand new website, which was developed for free by a volunteer named Gary Carter.

On the website, which can be found here, visitors can donate directly to the Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter, regardless of whether they were able to attend the festival or not.

He also pointed out the festival’s growing star power, giving credit to the festival’s headliners — ​“Chewy and the Grateful Friends,” ​“Steamroller,” and ​“Jackie Meeker and the Levitating Hubinger Extravaganza” — for drawing out a loyal crowd of fans.

In addition to the bands, the festival also saw appearances from Cadillac John Seville of the radio station Country 92.5, Pam from 99.1’s Chaz and AJ show, and Johnny Mack from Nissan Barbarino.

State Reps Lonnie Reed and Sean Scanlon both spoke at the event. Earlier, at the Woofwalk, Reed continued her tradition of public service by standing in as a traffic director to help her fellow walkers cross the street to the Stony Creek Brewery. 

Here Scanlon poses with his dog, Delaney. 

A Furry Lost and Found

The shelter’s other priority, aside from rescuing animals, is to make sure they go to happy and loving homes — in past years, Laura Burban noted earnestly, the numbers of adoptions from the shelter had risen post Woofstock.

It appeared that many of these dogs had come back with their owners for this year’s Woofstock. In fact, Sonny & Cher were Dan Cosgrove rescues.

“We never know when there’s going to be a case where there’s forty cats that need to be saved out of a house,” said Burban. What sounded like a hyperbole was actually an anecdote; this was a scenario that the shelter had faced.

It had been a long day for Burban, who had arrived at the green at 4:30 a.m. with a flock of shelter dogs to parade around the green for News Channel 8. ​“It was awesome,” she recalled. ​“They came out do live feeds, and we got to have all of the dogs out in the vests.”

By this, she was referring to the neon yellow ​“adopt me” vests that many of the shelter’s own dogs sported as they roamed around the festival.

One of the most memorable dogs at the festival, though, was a dog named Buddy. Buddy was old and blind, and his owners had thought it was time to put him down. But the vets at Mill Pond disagreed. Now, Buddy lives with his owners’ daughter, who pushed him through the Woofwalk in a stroller.

“He’s one of those dogs that makes you happy in your heart, you know?” said Don Hemmer, who, in addition to being the head tech at the hospital, is also Dr. Yarrow’s husband. Though he didn’t woof, Buddy seemed to agree.

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