Life has a funny way of testing you when you say you’ll do “just about anything,” to hit a goal. As y’all know (because I’ve hit you over the head with it on social), we’re doing a Virtual Pug Run 5k/10k and 1 Miler to raise money for the Northern Illinois Pug Rescue.
As my hubby-to-be prepares for his first marathon, to run the Chicago Marathon on October 12th, he will be dedicating each one of his 26.2 miles to saving the life of one pug and help them with medical care and TLC, find a loving forever home. To do that, it will cost about $300 per mile, for a total of $7,860…not a small sum by any means!
To help him save 26.2 pugs, we’re having a Virtual Pug Run with awesome PUG UNICORN (in all caps, cuz c’mon) diecast medals. Folks can run on their own time, at home (track, treadmill, trail, etc.) from now until Oct. 12th and the week of the Chicago Marathon, we will mail out the medals. If we hit the goal, he will run in an amazing pug wrestling singlet. We are trying to get signups THIS WEEK in order to place an accurate medal order in September.
This week, I hit the ground running (both literally and figuratively) to spread the word about the Pug Run. I was tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming the interwebs and borderline spamming my loved ones to get folks to share and register. Right now is the big push to fundraise, I need to place the order for medals in the first week of September, so I’ve been HUSTLIN’.
I’ve been posting on the various Facebook groups I’m a part of- pug rescue groups, pug lover groups, running groups, and of course, Team #rundisney on Facebook. As I’m doing my normal rounds on the Facebook groups to leave comments and such, I see a gal who posts about a whale button up shirt from Target. Apparently, she is in LOVE with it but didn’t snag it before it was gone and was trying to track one down.
This is where it gets good. I love this shirt, I really do. It’s one of my favey faves, and when I shared it on Instagram, it got a ton of double-taps for how cute it was. (Rightly so.) I could wear this shirt for a long time and love it, but here was a crazy opportunity to send this shirt off to someone who could quite possibly love it more than me….I appreciate her tenacity.
I replied to her with a pic of the shirt and said I would be happy to send it to her, and pay for shipping, if she could get 10 runners to sign up for the Virtual Pug Run. In typical runner style, she responded with a “challenge accepted,” and got straight to work.
Needless to say, I’m one whale shirt short, but we’re both very happy and we now have more awesome pug runners and a funny story to tell about it.
I don’t know if an opportunity like that would come up again in the course of this fundraiser, but I just know, it would be worth trying. Being able to help pugs has got me out of bed this week. I’ve been refreshing the registration page like a crazy person, but it’s put a spring in my step. Also being able to connect with an awesome runner for a win-win has been great. She is going to love her shirt and I seriously am grateful for this little bit of serendipity.
If opportunity knocks like this again, I will totally take it. Though, I’m not sure how many cute shirts I have left… I’ll have to get creative. 😉
We need around 375 runners to hit our donation goal and save 26(.2) pugs. That means, a lot of sharing, a lot of tweeting and a lot of awesome pug runners heeding the call to help, but we are getting closer because of awesome people like you.
My hope is that this is a fun way to raise money and awareness about another worthy cause. Truly, there is so much need in the world, as runners, joggers, walkers and dabblers in the activity, we are gifted with a love for sport that also gives so much back.
We don’t have to run, we GET to run. Thank you for running for pugs. I’m running out of shirts to randomly barter off, so a share is appreciated, we need to save 26.2 pugs and it’s going to take a village!
Click here to register, click below to share!
How many people have signed up so far?
Hi Kelsey! We have 84 and over $300 in extra donations… I’m so grateful. We have a ways to go to hit 300+ runners, but I know we can do it!
Every share helps!!
Just refreshed! We have almost $500 in extra donations!! YAYYY!!!
I absolutely love this story!! It’s crazy how worlds can collide sometimes ….I’m going to sign up and share as well…that medal is so darn cute and for such a great cause 🙂
Thank you so much Samantha!! I appreciate the share and sign up, I cannot wait to send you your medal!
My mom and I signed up for the run! We’ll be running this weekend. My pug Rosie and her shih tzu Tiki will be waiting for us at the finish line (aka home!) Have you stopped in to pughcat on Wednesdays? Every Wednesday at 6 PM Central time, pug chat goes down on twitter hosted by Hamilton Pug. I tweeted it over to Hamilton this morning but it’d be great to get the word out next Wednesday during the chat when hundreds of people are tweeting and #pugchat is the number one trending topic! Can probably get some sign ups there and have a lot of fun too! Hope this helps!