In the midst of a busy school day, San José State students were able to lighten up their moods and spend some time with animals at the Pet a Dog Fundraising event on Wednesday at Tower Lawn.
The event was organized by business entrepreneurship junior Akane Ali-Winfrey, business analytics junior Belen Cerrutti, business management junior Kevin Arriola and business administration junior Tobias Haemmerle.
Ali-Winfrey said the event was for their fundamental management's organizational behavior class in which her group was tasked to organize a fundraiser for a non-profit organization.
She said her group chose a dog fundraising event because they all loved dogs.
“Seeing these puppies are like the highlight of my day right now,” undeclared freshman Jasmine Angeline Tejano said.
In the event, students petted dogs and donated to the County of Santa Clara Animal Services. Donations were gathered from homemade dog treat sales or items picked from the Amazon wish list made for the dogs, according to SJSU’s website.
Cerrutti said her group made the treats out of organic ingredients. She said she let her own puppy taste the treats first to make sure they were good for the other dogs.
She also said some of the ingredients used were turmeric, black pepper, coconut oil and more.
“It's really not that expensive to just make it yourself,” Cerrutti said.
Cerrutti said her community college had dogs to pet during finals week and she thought it would be a good idea to bring that idea to SJSU.
She said the event was also good for the dogs, as they are from the County of Santa Clara Animal Services shelter.
“They don't get as much time in fresh air and exposure to people so it'd be good if they could also get adopted today,” Cerrutti said.
Cerrutti said volunteers from Santa Clara County Animal Services traveled from Morgan Hill to SJSU to help out at the event and escort the dogs.
She said there were originally supposed to be more than two dogs at the event but since her group had issues getting a parking permit for a big van to hold more dogs, they were only able to have two.
“Maybe sometime in the future it'd be cool to have more dogs on campus,” Cerrutti said
Pictorial art freshman Malaya Mendoza said it was comforting to see the dogs because it reminded her of her dogs back home.
She said she enjoys being around the animals.
“They're (dogs) just fun to be around,” Mendoza said. “They have attachments to you which gives you a sense of happiness.”
