Pit bulls and other rescue animals will benefit from a bit of the blarney on Friday night.
"St. Pat's for Pits," an event to be held Friday at the Baiting Hollow Farm Vineyard on Sound Avenue from 5:30 p.m. until 9 p.m., is a fundraiser organized by Pibbles & More Animal Rescue, Inc., a no-kill non-profit, all-breed volunteer rescue organization with chapters in Long Island, Queens, and Vermont.
The event costs $10 and includes food; wine and beer will be available for purchase and raffles and a 50/50 will be featured.
According to Riverhead resident Nicole Buckner, who organized the event, a quote from the PMAR brochure expresses her desire to help rescues. "He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion."
Buckner added, "Responsibility and education goes along way when it comes to animals. It's when you are not responsible or educated that the animals suffer."
Pibbles & More, she said, is a small, home-based rescue made up of fosters and volunteers who not only "generously give of their time but give of themselves."
Animals, Buckner said, are rescued from across the United States. "Wherever there is an animal in need, Pibbles & More Animal Rescue is there for them," she said. "No animal is turned away, from the smallest kitten -- for the newly formed Kitty Corner-- to the largest dog."
Buckner said she organized the event to give back after PMAR touched her life.
PMAR, she said, "directly helped me rescue a dog I found on the side of a busy highway while in vacation in Miami, Florida."
Depite the name Pibbles & More, Buckner said the organization helps all breeds, as well as cats and kittens.
But, she added, pit bulls often suffer from public backlash. "There are a lot of misconceptions about pit bulls out there," she said. "However, it is my opinion that it is all in the way that the dog is raised. Saying pit bulls are a bad breed, or that they are aggressive, is just as rediculous as saying that if a person of a certain race or sex does something wrong, that whole race or sex is bad because of that one person."
