Dog Rescue Group Benefits from Craft Beer Festival

Dunedin Doggie Rescue at Cajun Cafe Craft Beer Festival.

Great beer festivals are multi-taskers.

They bring craft beer lovers together for camaraderie, they offer a chance for attendees to sample a wide variety of brew brands and styles, and they introduce drinkers of mass-produced lagers to the world of beers that taste good.

But many do something else that often gets amid the clusters of taps and rows of bottles: They raise money for local charities and groups that try to make this a better world for everyone.

The Cajun Café on the Bayou holds two great craft beer festivals each year – in the spring and fall – and for the past three fests, owners Paul and Rebecca Unwin have invited Dunedin Doggie Rescue to hold a raffle of donated beer and beer items to raise funds for the group.

Dunedin Doggie Rescue, based in Dunedin, engenders a noble role in saving the lives of potential canine companions headed to death. According to its website:

• We rescue dogs from rural kill shelters on their last days (allowing others to adopt first).
• We bring them to Dunedin, get them fully vetted and up to date with shots and all needed medical treatment.
• We train and socialize them by bringing them to a variety of public places for showings… and then we find a forever home for them in Dunedin or surrounding areas.

Since it started in 2006, the website says, the not-for-profit group has rescued and placed more than 200 dogs.

And the Florida craft beer community has been a big part of it. Co-founders Ken “KK” Koenig and Cathy Schultz are both certified beer judges. KK is the former president of the Dunedin Brewers Guild and served on the Florida Brewers Guild Board. But he put aside the call of fermenting for the new one.

“Gave up making beer and organizing beer groups for another passion – rescue work,” he said in an email interview, “but we still run most of our rescue events around good beer. From longtime friendships in the beer world I have been able to get breweries, restaurants, distributors and the (Oldsmar) TapHouse to support the cause.”

The Cajun Café craft beer festivals have been some of the most successful fundraising events for DDR, and Paul Unwin is a big admirer of the group’s work.

“They work tirelessly for the well being of the dogs they foster,” Paul said. “Some of these poor old dogs are blind, and almost impossible to foster, but they keep plugging away at it.”

At the last festival, KK said, DDR raised $1,176. The money paid for the vetting (spay/neuter, shots and microchip) for eight dogs.

“It was the biggest raffle I’ve seen at any Florida beer fest,” he said.

The 2011 Cajun Café on the Bayou Spring Craft Beer Festival (named one of the 2011 Top 10 Spring Beer Festivals on my Road Trips for Beer site) will be this Saturday, April 16 at 8101 Park Blvd., Pinellas Park.

Some of the items raffled at the Cajun Cafe Fall Beer Festival in 2010.

Tickets to win some of the more than 100 items of beer and beer paraphernalia will be sold for $1 each by Dunedin Doggie Rescue representatives. All of that money will go to the group.

Festival admission is $35 at the gate. That includes unlimited sampling of the beer poured by local, regional and national craft brewers and homebrewers, as well as a plate of mouthwatering Cajun cuisine, water and soft drinks. A live jazz band will entertain in the café’s covered outdoor pavilion.

If you can’t make it to the festival, you can donate to Dunedin Doggie Rescue by clicking on this link.

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