Anna’s Kindness artists transform milkhouse

CHELSEA, MI – Artistic talents and kind hearts intertwined on Saturday to create a colorful meet-and-greet room for prospective adoptive families of foster dogs at Mikey & Me.

The dog rescue operation was founded by Dan DePew just over a year ago and relies heavily on volunteers, from dog care to fundraising for improvement projects. Until now, families who have adopted dogs have interacted with their new pet outdoors and completed adoption paperwork inside the private residence onsite.

The meet-and-greet room will allow adopters to play with their new canine family member unleashed as well as complete the necessary paperwork all in the same space. The new room is a converted milkhouse and is connected to a 100-year-old old barn where the dogs have their own large kennels, er, bedrooms.

Nine Anna’s Kindness students volunteered their Saturday morning to paint pictures of colorful dogs, rainbows, fire hydrants and bones to make the Mikey & Me room warmer and more inviting.

It was the third time Anna’s Kindness students have volunteered since April. That’s when Carina Sanborn’s family first heard about the rescue organization. Carina, who will be a junior at Ann Arbor’s Pioneer High School in the fall, has been coming out ever since to volunteer on her own.

“I come out here a lot with my mom to walk the dogs. We mostly just hang out in the kennels with them and walk them,” said Carina, who, along with Hayley Marchand, painted a large multicolored abstract dog on one wall. On another wall, the pair painted two smaller dogs playing soccer with the words “Forsythe Soccer.” Marchand and Anna played soccer together as 7th graders for Forsythe Middle School in Ann Arbor. This fall, Marchand will be a 9th grader at Pioneer.

Anna’s friends and Forsythe soccer teammates, Lindsay Horning and Olivia Wright, both 9th graders this fall, also helped paint. Mya Purdy, an 8th grader from Chelsea’s Beach Middle School who played with Anna on the Hurricanes travel softball team, helped paint along with her younger brother, Mason.

“I had helped the team volunteer to feed homeless with Anna’s Kindness but I missed the last Mikey & Me. I love dogs and just like doing service in general so I wanted to be sure that I could come today,” said Mya.

Other volunteers were Samantha Towers and Jordan Hall, incoming high school freshmen who were Anna’s classmates at Forsythe, and Anna’s brother, Alex.

Samantha and Jordan attended the first Mikey & Me event, when volunteers played with the dogs. They paired up on Saturday to paint large paw prints and bones on the door connecting the meet-and-greet room and the kennels.

“We did Mikey & Me before, and when we heard (Anna’s Kindness) was coming back we thought it would be a ton of fun. It’s such a wonderful organization,” said Jordan.

“We wanted to come back and do more for them,” said Samantha.

A huge thank you to Mikey & Me’s Dan DePew and his volunteers for helping coordinate the painting, and for inviting Anna’s Kindness to help transform the milkhouse. Please ‘like’ Anna’s Kindness on Facebook or follow on Instagram for even more news about our charity.

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