The Raymond-Hawkinson Family

Handipets Kennel Rebuild FundRaiser

Posted in: Becky's Corner | Comments (0)

First we wish to thank Lisanne Walke of Rockin’ & Ridin’ for Autism for assisting us in this fundraiser. They created this awesome flier for us and are helping us promote this fundraiser in hopes that we can get our “Crippled Critters” into a larger, safe, private, community accepted, stockade kennel with feline containment netting.

Dixie Thunder of Aiken County SC helped us raise funds to build a small lumber and wire mesh kennel for our special critters. Unfortunately weather and outside animals trying to get in took it’s toll on the kennel through 2009 and the 2010 South Carolina snowstorm finally destroyed it. We are spending precious funds on temporary patchups of a collapsing kennel when what we need is to build a new one. We can’t keep patching the existing one AND buy new fence panels at the same time. This is where we need help. We can keep patching the existing damaged kennel as long as someone is willing to help us buy new fence panels. Once we have all the fence panels we need we can begin erect the new fence, tear down the remains of the old one and recycle whatever we can to finish off the new one.

We run our kennel purely out of pocket and with the annual Crippled Critter Benefit Events held by Dixie Thunder. This alone helps us care for the animals, providing them high quality grain/gluten free commercial foods such as
Taste of the Wild Roasted Venison and Smoked Salmon dry food,
Dick Van Patten’s Natural Balance® L.I.D. Limited Ingredient Diets® Venison & Green Pea Canned Formula,
Honest Kitchen dehydrated raw food for cats as well as raw foods a diet known as BARF

We also use botanical and holistic care and buy items locally at Aiken County’s Herb Store

How you can help

We can accept gift cards for Superpetz as this is the only local store that sells the dry and canned foods we feed our crew. Helping us with animal food helps us put our funds toward fence panels.

We can accept gift cards for Home Depot which has the lowest price stockade fence panels in our area and they have an E-Gift card program.

We can accept gift cards for The Tractor Supply Company which has the right size wire mesh at the lowest cost in our area.

We can pick up items purchased if you wish to just purchase one or more of the items we need and let the store know Amy Hawkinson will pick up.

The Store addresses are:
Home Depot
Aiken #1117

1785 Whiskey Road
Aiken, SC 29803
(803)648-6291

Superpetz
1589 Whiskey Road
Aiken, SC 29803
803-641-1146

Tractor Supply Company
AIKEN
#724

2655 WHISKEY ROAD – AIKEN, SC 29803
(803) 648-4449

Finally we are accepting Credit/Debit/Paypal donations here:
http://www.chipin.com/contribute/id/e39514f608b80ed7

Becky @ March 2, 2010

bad Bad BAD Week

Posted in: Becky's Corner | Comments (0)

Truck goes off the road, Kennel implodes, My card numbers are stolen and my bank account emptied out and we went to do laundry to find the washer is dead. Am I having a bad week or is it all just a really horrid dream? Just wondering if it’s ok to scream now?

Becky @ February 18, 2010

Handipets needs a little help due to storm damage

Posted in: Charity, Pets | Comments (0)

Handipets Needs a Little Help

Posted in: General Pets In Need | Comments (1)

Hello Friends of Handipets

Most who frequent the Handipets sites know what we do. We help people raise funds for medical care for this special needs pets or we help them find the special home that can give their pet the care that is needed.

Locally we were taking non-medical disabled pets. Our kennel is full and we do not accept any new comers but we do need to take care of the ones we have promised.

Our acceptance is narrow, blind/deaf, limb disorders, balance/coordination disorders, food allergy and related issues, food aggression, hostile/fearful toward humans (feral/hard stray rehabs), toothless and just plain gross or ugly ones that families can’t seem to deal with. We offer them an outdoor area (which most prefer) and we keep it all natural. They also have access to a portable building which is my office and where I spend all of my days and they have access to my bedroom where of course I spend the rest of my time. Only a fraction like to come inside though so we need as much outdoor space as we can confine with a full netted canopy.

The winter snow storms that blew in there on Feb 12 (highly unusual for South Carolina) not only caused my partner to go off the road and into a ditch…but the snow laid heavily upon the nylon netting that is the feline containment canopy that covers the entire kennel, it weighed it down so badly the netting dropped 6 feet and touched the ground!!! It snowed through the night and the weight of the net pulling down damaged the timber side walls of the kennel pulling them inward and breaking several cross boards that hold the chicken wire netted walls as well as the nylon canopy netting. The netting tore from the office building and mobile home.

Now we have a badly damaged kennel and this makes feline escapes an extremely high risk. We have been needing to rebuild the kennel for quite some time now, I have have a chip in donation widget in the left column but now It’s URGENT. Sidney was shot by a neighbor and it was after his shooting we worked hard to come up with funds to build a kennel and feline containment system.

We get some help from Dixie Thunder of Aiken County with annual benefit fund raiser events which help us keep up on the kennel and of course the other needs of the animals inside the kennel but now it’s in such rough shape we simply need to build a new one with all new lumber and order new canopy netting.

I will have labor help to build a new kennel but I must have lumber and supplies.

PLEASE promote this fund raiser as you do those who need medical help. We will do what we can to patch the damage once all the snow melts but as anyone who must contain cats knows, you can’t make mistakes…they will find the weak points.

UPDATE! After being able to see the damage better today I realized we need to get something up there FAST. To do fast we need to scale things down to a more reasonable amount. So with measurements and another plan I have reduced the cost to between $1,000 and $1,500. I will get photos of the damage tomorrow, it was too dark by the time I got home today.

The photo below is a layout of my property seen from Google Earth. It’s clickable if you need to view it in a larger size.

Be revising the plan a little and doing a combo of stockade and wire mesh fencing, making it smaller…we brought the estimate down. Here is a new estimate for just the panels which is what we need first and fastest. We can recycle lumber as we tear out the damaged kennel. We at least have to have all the supplies for one wall before we start since we will have to tear out the existing to re-use what we can on the new one so one must come down and one must go up all in one day.

The paypal email address is handipets@comcast.net (this is also my contact email address)

Please give us a hand to keep our special critters safe and healthy

Amy @ February 15, 2010

Aiken County Family Lost Everything In a Fire

Posted in: Charity | Comments (0)

Kenneth, Holly, Kennie Marie and Nicholas Keenan. All I know is the fire broke out Sunday night while Holly and Nicholas were in bed and Kenneth and their daughter Kennie Marie were watching TV. He smelled smoke and went to investigate, by that time the fire was well on its way under the house and into the walls.

Dixie Thunder and Driven By The Spirit have collected food, toiletries, a microwave, blankets, towels and I have a list of household items already that people are willing to donate once they get a permanent place.

We have a guy standing by to help him move the old trailer off the lot once he is ready. He has a track hoe and can get the trailer in dumpsters for Rooster at no charge.

Any financial help is needed and would be appreciated. They will need to get a new place to live in as soon as they get the old place gone.

Paypal donations are being collected through My personal Paypal account (Becky Raymond) With permission from the director of Driven by the Spirit and the Chapter Coordinator of Dixie Thunder of Aiken County. I am also running a public Facebook page for the Keenan Family here: Keenan Family Fire Relief

Remember if you use paypal to log in and agree to cover the fees of the donation so that fees don’t get sucked out of it. If you do not use paypal you can just use your credit/debit card but please be aware that the fees are deducted from each donation at the rate of 2.9% + $0.30 USD

If the widget below doesn’t work for you the paypal donation email for this fund raiser is paypal@dixiethunderaiken.com If you have a website, blog or MySpace page please visit the chip in page and grab the widget to share on your site.

http://rayhawk.chipin.com/fire-victims

Mick has access to the list of contributers and I’m also supplying him with PDF records of all contributions to paypal@dixiethunderaiken.com.

Becky @ January 26, 2010