Heads up, pet lovers. Put a leash on your four-legged furry friend and drop by Sunday’s Pets in the Park at Wilfred Laurier Park.
It’s the Edmonton Humane Society’s 18th annual pet festival, a major fundraiser that will attract lots of pooches and pusses along with parrots and ferrets. You might even see the odd reptile.
There are plenty of activities for your energetic dog: bobbing for hotdogs, running in a free-for-all agility match and outwitting contenders in a nifty K-9 challenge. The redneck Furry Fliers are dropping by for a disc demonstration and Alberta Stock Dogs will strut their moves herding sheep.
Once again the very imaginative and energetic University of Alberta industrial design students have built about 20 one-of-a-kind functional pet beds that will be sold at a silent auction.
In this year-end class assignment, design students chose a partner and scoured the Internet for prominent architectural design styles on which to base their blueprint. From design to completion, students were required to source their own materials and pay costs.
Not having a large budget, former St. Albert Catholic high students Samantha Henshaw and Allison Leggatt teamed up and adopted a recycle and reuse concept. The end result was a three-foot by two-foot dog bed — comfortable enough for a medium to large-size dog.
The duo scoured Kijiji, Craigslist and the Reuse Centre and found an old hutch, an antique-looking frame and fabric.
“We demolished the hutch and put it back together again,” laughs Henshaw, adding the project took about 90 hours.
The wood was sanded down and repainted a greenish-blue with low-emission paint found at the Eco Station. “We wanted it to be safe for dogs.
The top of the hutch was used as a base and the spindles were incorporated as feet. An old blanket and fabric obtained at the Reuse Centre was stitched into a cushion.
“I do have a soft spot for animals and the fact this project is for the humane society is great. It’s cool that is something that people will put in their house and use.”
St. Albert high student Andrew Lesniak and his partner Will Dempster instead fashioned a cat bed with smooth lines and geometric shapes. The two-foot-long bed is constructed from a wood-fibre product and covered with cork and hardwood veneer.
In one corner there’s room to grow catnip or grasses to aid a feline’s finicky digestion. There’s even a tower, a scratching post to sharpen the claws. “There’s a finish on the cork and cats can sink their claws into it,” Lesniak says.
St. Albert student Nick Kazakoff created a model based on a Frank Lloyd Wright design. The six-foot bed built for a great dane is riddled with horizontal planes and even has a cantilevered section that looks suspended in mid air.
Another bed is constructed from sturdy cardboard and yet another incorporates recycled hardwood and bamboo.
Lesniak adds, “This is for a great cause and it was really inspiring to work on project that had a purpose. It wasn’t just for ourselves, but for someone else.”
Dogs in the Park runs 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
