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s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o
Sun Valley Summer Symphony’s Chamber Series Starts Up
the weekly
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Fly Fishing Exhibit, Films and Fair this Weekend Page 5
Don’t Miss Your Chance to Win Tickets to Braun Brothers Reunion, Journey & Counting Crows Page 12
J u l y 1 8 , 2 0 1 2 • V o l . 5 • N o . 2 9 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m COURTESY PHOTO: WILL CALDWELL
BY KAREN BOSSICK
T
Matsiko Choir Schedule
July 17 – Farmers’ Market, Ketchum 3:00 p.m. July 17 – Ketch’em Alive, Forest Service Park, Ketchum July 19 – Farmers’ Market, Hailey - 3:00 p.m. July 19 – Ketchum Town Square July 20 – The Wicked Spud, Hailey July 21 – Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church - 5:00 p.m. Mass July 22 - Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church - 10:30 a.m. Mass
want A FREE PERFORMANCE?
If anybody wishes the choir to perform at the venue of your choosing or at your private party, Helen would love to hear from you. Good entertainment with great karma! Please call Helen at 208-622-7555. tws
read about it on PaGe 15
years
Ketch’em Alive: Billy Franklin Band, Matsiko Encore
he Matsiko World Orphan Choir will stage an encore performance from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Ketchum Town Plaza for those who couldn’t get enough of them Tuesday night at Ketch’em Alive. The orphans from Peru and Liberia range in age from 8 to 15 years old. They’re making several appearances around the Valley during their twoweek stay in the Sun Valley area. The choir, started by the International Children’s Network in 2008, takes its name from the Ugandan word for “hope.” Sun Valley residents Helen and Pawan Mehra have sponsored the choir’s Pawan & Helen Mehra appearances here for the past few years as a way to give back to a country that they say has given them opportunities and enabled them to fulfill the American dream. “Having traveled to Third World countries all our lives we realize that U.S. foreign aid seldom reaches the deserving and almost never the young in their respective countries,” Pawan Mehra said. The choir, in contrast, offers a hand-up to youngsters in their formative years, he said. The children visit the U.S. for a year, immersing themselves in U.S. culture with the goal of taking the values they learn from their host families back home with them. They also sell trinkets from their countries at concerts, using the money they make for educational scholarships for fellow orphans. “It is inspirational to see how happy and excited they are, coming from extremely dire backgrounds,” said Mehra. Other free vibes this week: The Lower Broadford Boys and Old Death Whisper will play the Back Alley Party from 6 to 9:30 tonight at the Wicked Spud, 305 N. Main St., in Hailey. Jazz in the Park will feature a Boise/Sun Valley Latin Jazz Ensemble from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Ketchum’s Rotary Park, Warm Springs and Saddle roads. Ketch’em Alive features the New Orleans funk of the Billy Franklin Band from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at Ketchum’s Forest Service Park, First and Washington streets.
Expedition Inspiration’s Paint the Town Pink Week kicks off this Monday
for the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley
BY KAREN BOSSICK
K A number of school groups visit the shelter each year to learn how the shelter takes care of the animals. Here Shelter Director Jo-Anne Dixon visits with a group of mini-surgeons in the stuffed animal clinic. Photo: BROOKE BONNER
Animal Shelter alum Fozzie Bear was happily adopted into the McGovern family. Photo: BROOKE BONNER
Lyn Stallard used her dog Cody as a model for the fiberglass Labs in the 2001 Summer of Labs fundraiser. The auction itself was waylaid when 9-11 forced the cancellation of air traffic. But they eventually had it, raising more than $100,000 for the shelter, a Canine Companion, The Delta Society and a rescue ranch they had hoped to start before the recession hit. Photo: KAREN BOSSICK/SUN
etchum old-timers are fond of telling how traffic was once so slight during slack that dogs could sleep in the middle of the street without getting run over. Problem is, there were too many dogs lying in the streets! That’s what prompted a number of people to open the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley on five acres in Croy Canyon donated by a benefactor. Today—30 years later—the shelter is tightly woven into the fabric of the Sun Valley area. “We serve 1,500 animals a year through our various programs. And we were the first no-kill shelter in the state. That shows how this community feels about its animals,” said veterinarian JoAnne Dixon, who was appointed executive director of the shelter in 2007. Lyn Stallard left a career designing billboards for Ted Turner in Atlanta to move to Sun Valley in the early 1970s after she and her husband had the time of their life on a whitewater rafting trip. She got a job here as the dispatcher, flipping a switch to sound a siren on top of Pete’s Lane’s Mercantile whenever the police were needed. “One of the policemen told me they would put a dog in heat at the police station and shoot the dogs that came along to take care of the stray dog problem. I said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But that was what spurred me to try to provide a shelter for the dogs,” Stallard said. Saving dogs was a heartfelt issue with Stallard, dating back to when a tornado destroyed her home and cocker spaniel Bow Wow when she was 9. “I think I’ve been on a mission to save animals ever since,” she said. “I always thought I owed it to Bow Wow because I didn’t get her out of our house.” Over the next 10 years Stallard and a handful of others, including dog-catcher Mary Stevens, veterinarian Bob Beede, Rowena Mallon, Lou Limon and Nan Emerick, began raising money to build a shelter. They took no government money; instead, they held fashion shows and auctions, for which one of the local doctors would donate a vasectomy. And they
raised enough money to build a shelter in 1983 on five acres that a benefactor donated three miles west of Hailey. They called it the Animal Hospice until they decided people were getting it confused with the hospice for people. “We hired Bobby Noyes, a hockey player, to run it. And Jerome Rovnak, whom we called ‘the original hippie,’ served as caretaker—I remember one of his friends came to visit him and had a baby in the shelter,” Stallard said. “We held meetings around my dining room table and we kept raising money. Mrs. Friedman—the airport Friedman—donated $5,000 to build a cat room. Sophie Engelhardt donated $100,000 and we made her president. And the Wood River Valley grew into a place where everybody takes care of dogs.” But, while there was a place for stray dogs, they couldn’t be kept indefinitely. Euthanization was very much a part of life in the early days of the shelter. “Good dogs were getting lost in the shelter because they got to be one year… 16 months… and they were unruly because we didn’t have volunteers to train them, so no one would adopt them. The board said, there’s got to be a better way because there’s nothing wrong with these dogs,” recalled Leslie Luray, a volunteer and board member for 15 years. And so the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley became Idaho’s first no-kill shelter. The board instituted a foster program encouraging people to take dogs home and work with them. And, rather than wait for people to come to the shelter to walk a dog, they started a Hiking Buddies program, which takes dogs to Adams Gulch to be walked once a week. Some Wednesdays as many as 30 people show up to walk them. “A lot of summer visitors make Hiking Buddies an annual ritual. And a lot of these people take dogs home with them to other states, even other countries,” said Luray. “Jo-Anne Dixon came in at a critical juncture and took the shelter to a whole new level. Now every dog and cat is spayed and neutered. Now every dog and cat receives a microchip.” To fund all of that, Stallard and Terry
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7th Annual
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Friday July 20th 7pm Sun Valley Opera House Tickets $15 Limited Seating Scan QR code to purhcase tickets online.
7YL WHY[` WT :PS]LY *YLLR 6\[Ä [[LYZ :\U =HSSL`
FLY FISHING PRODUCT FAIR Saturday July 21st 10am - 4pm :PS]LY *YLLR 6\[Ä [[LYZ 2L[JO\T :[VYL Live Art by artist A.D. Maddox BBQ by Apple’s Bar & Grill www.silver-creek.com 208-726-5282