But what’s any of that got to do with a calendar contest? Suddenly being on the inside and seeing how much Colorado Pet Pantry gives to the community, and how crushing it was to watch one fund-raising event after another be cancelled due to social distancing I knew I needed to do more. I stumbled across the calendar contest idea by sheer luck while listening to a pet photography podcast…yup, there’s a podcast for everything.

It was already late Summer, and I knew if we were going to drop a calendar by the new year there wasn’t a minute to waste. So I brought the idea to our fearless leader. It was really one of the Ready, Fire, Aim kinda situations. We launched the contest a week later with a vague hope of raising a few hundred dollars. We set the goal at $5000, but secretly I prayed we’d just be able to cover the minimum cost of printing the minimum order of calendars.