The Animal Shelter of Martha’s Vineyard’s fourth annual fundraiser added more than $10,000 to shelter coffers on Sunday, with an additional $15,000 received from shelter supporters unable to attend the event.
More than 200 humans, two alpacas from the Island Alpaca Company, a Weimaraner from Aquinnah and Waylon the black and white runaway springer spaniel-Labrador mix found, captured and returned to his home after two weeks in the wintry Oak Bluffs-Edgartown woods last December, all attended the festivities held in the West Tisbury garden of Jim and Holly Coyne on Sunday. Musical entertainment was provided by Mark Alan Lovewell.
Auctioneer Trip Barnes offered such inviting activities to bidders as an oyster farm tour of Jack Blake’s Sweetwater farm on Katama Bay, a fishing charter with Capt. Buddy Vanderhoop of Aquinnah, and a cruise aboard the schooner Charlotte, courtesy of her captain, Nat Benjamin of Vineyard Haven and Larsen’s Fish Market of Menemsha. Tickets to a Red Sox game, art, a round-trip flight to Nantucket that included sightseeing, and a session on the green at the Vineyard Golf Club, with lunch, were also offered.
There were also silent auction items.
Donors were also asked, on a wish list, to contribute to interior and exterior painting of the shelter, medical aid for an ill animal, spaying and neutering costs, and a special fund for all of the shelter animals with health needs.
Sunday’s event was the first shelter fundraiser to be held since the animal welfare organization became independent in January.
Founded by the late Katharine M. Foote, a Bostonian-turned-Vineyarder who devoted much of her life to nurturing animals, the shelter opened in Edgartown in 1930. It later became an MSPCA shelter until it was closed by that society in 2009. From then until the beginning of this year, it was kept open with county aid. At present, the no-kill shelter has both cats and kittens available for adoption.
Donations to the shelter by anyone who missed the event may be made to the Animal Shelter of Martha’s Vineyard. P.O. 1829, Edgartown, MA 02539.
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