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Penobbie Paws 4-H Club is sponsoring an event to help one of its own.
The club is based at Golden Moments in Brewer, a nonprofit organization that trains service dogs for individuals with special needs.
Carlene Rice, a 16-year-old Brewer High School student, “has CMT, a form of muscular dystrophy,” explained Clara Grover, operations manager for Golden Moments.
“It’s a deteriorating muscle disease, which affects such things as speech, walking and balance,” Grover added. “Carlene is in a wheelchair 60 percent of the time.”
In February, Rice visited Golden Moments, where she met one of the organization’s service dogs.
“It was love at first sight,” Grover said of Rice and Champ, a young service-dog-in-training.
Champ is a golden retriever who came to Golden Moments when he was 8 weeks old.
He has since gone through the Puppy Foster Program, where he and his volunteer handler attend weekly training sessions at Golden Moments.
Through subsequent visits to Golden Moments, Rice not only learned what it is like to be around a service dog, but what it is like to be a member of 4-H.
“In Penobbie Paws, we teach kids all about dog health, dog obedience, dog agility and how to take care of your dog,” Grover said.
Teachers and others working with Rice noticed how much happier she had become after meeting Champ and joining 4-H, and it was suggested she should have a service dog of her own.
A service dog would “pick up everything for her, wear her backpack and carry everything for her,” Grover explained.
But obtaining a service dog is an expensive undertaking.
“It costs $6,000 for a service dog,” Grover explained, which is why so many people who care about Carlene Rice are sponsoring fund-raisers and working in other ways to help her raise the money to purchase Champ.
One of those fund-raisers is a benefit supper for Carlene and Champ from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, June 19, at Golden Moments, 30 Clisham Road in Brewer.
Admission for the baked bean and casserole event is $5 per person, but additional donations would be graciously accepted.
If you would like to help Carlene and Champ be together, and you cannot attend the supper, checks made out to Golden Moments with Rice’s name in the memo line will be applied to her service dog fund.
Checks can be sent to Golden Moments, 30 Clisham Road, Brewer 04412.
Dave Kroehler reports that members of the Oratorio Society of the University of Maine, accompanied by “some spouses and friends,” will begin a European tour Sunday, June 22.
The Oratorio Society is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Planned for more than a year, the idea for the tour was generated by Professor Ludlow Hallman’s love of Salzburg, Austria, and the music of Mozart, Kroehler wrote.
During the two-week tour, “we are booked to sing in Salzburg, St. Florian, Linz and Vienna, Austria, as well as Velehrad and Prague in the Czech Republic, all of which were chosen because of their Mozart connection,” Kroehler explained.
One of the society’s final appearances “will be as the first choral group from America to participate in a music festival in Prague,” Kroehler added.
Directed by Hallman and accompanied by Clayton Smith, soloists include Tina Cote, Ed Hummel, Joan Kroehler, Trina Penney and Peter Nesin.
The community choral ensemble consists of singers from Bangor, Belfast, Brewer, Bucksport, Old Town, Lewiston and Orono.
You are invited to enjoy a pre-European-tour concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 19, in Minsky Hall on the UMaine campus in Orono.
Admission is free, Kroehler wrote, “with any donations gratefully accepted.”
Gene Staffiere, director of the March of Dimes’ northern Maine division, reports proceeds from gate ticket sales for the Bangor Lumberjacks baseball game at 7:15 p.m. Thursday, June 19, at Mahaney Diamond at the University of Maine in Orono, will benefit the March of Dimes.
Additionally, a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales for that game, purchased at Bangor Letter Shop or KeyBank branches in Bangor and Brewer, will also benefit the March of Dimes. Ticket prices at those locations are $6 for adults and $4 for children 12 and under.
The March of Dimes works to prevent birth defects.
Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.
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