On Sunday, March 24, residents of Cupertino had the opportunity to engage in activities with their dogs at Cupertino Main Street’s bi-annual Paws on Main event. From 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m., the event offered free nail-clipping, a free consultation from professional dog trainer Brad Greene, giveaways, Doga (Dog Yoga),  the Agility Activity Area (structures set up for dogs to play with other dogs) and booths for organizations spreading awareness about their business, like Eureka! and Silicon Valley Pet Project.

The event provided participants and their dogs the opportunity to meet others from the community and play in a new setting. Volunteer for Silicon Valley Pet Project and City of San Jose Animal Center Pat Fraguglia enjoyed the event and found it as a great way to get people in the community to interact with each other.

“[Paws on Main is] wonderful,” Fraguglia said. “It gets people out, intermingling, talking to one another. Everybody loves dogs and it’s a really wonderful, positive event [because] you can see all the different breeds.”

Events like Paws on Main also give dogs a chance to take part in new activities and meet other dogs. Similar to Fraguglia, participant Cecilia De Freitas likes how Paws on Main was a change in scenery for her dog.

“I think, generally, people with dogs try to find places to get the dogs together, like I see they [often] try by themselves like ‘let’s get the dogs to some dog park’ [whereas] here you can meet like-minded people that want to do that,” De Freitas said. “And I saw that there’s an awesome place [where you can adopt] dogs, a great place [because] people don’t have to find or go to a pet store.”

Silicon Valley Pet Project, a non-profit animal rescue organization based in San Jose rescues dogs, cats, kittens and puppies from San Jose Animal Control and puts them up for adoption to the community. Volunteers and members from the organization brought some of the dogs that are available to be adopted to help further explain their program and mission, which is to “encourage people to get involved in animal welfare” and “animal rescue,” according to President of Silicon Valley Pet Project Melissa Lisbon.

“All of our dogs that are available for adoption are listed on our website and you get people applying for them all the time,” Lisbon said. “But we do do a lot of community outreach to promote our mission, which is animal rescue. There’s so many things that [people] can do, either [by] becoming a foster parent [or] volunteering, and we have core support adoption from shelters and rescues so it’s really great to get out here with all these animal lovers and promote that mission because it’s really important to support a lot of the pets [at our shelters] that [many] people don’t know about.”

According to Fraguglia, one of the main ways Silicon Valley Pet Project brings attention to the dogs that need to be adopted is by exposing them to the community with their “Adopt Me” vests on. The Silicon Valley Pup Plaza, which is the domain for the Silicon Valley Pet Project, and the Pruneyard Shopping Center are some of the places the dogs are taken to, and Paws on Main was another opportunity for some dogs and the organization as a whole to receive notice.

“I’ve been doing Dog Day Out [where] every Monday, we go to the shelter, pull dogs, rescue dogs from the shelter and bring them to Pup Plaza,” Fraguglia said. “We have the dogs from the shelter roaming around and having a day away from the shelter. When we take them out we want them to get adopted so they’re exposed into the public.”

For more information visit https://svpetproject.org or Silicon Valley Pet Project’s Instagram @svpetproject.