Desrochers sisters give back

The North Attleborough Girl Scouts Gianna and Monique Desrochers of Troop 226 have earned the highest Junior Girl Scout Award, the Bronze award.

Earned by completing a service project that must take a minimum of 15 hours to complete, the Desrochers chose to do a Bronze Award project to benefit the Attleboro Animal Shelter because their family adopted a dog, "Scout" from the shelter last year.

Monique and Gianna met with the animal shelter staff to figure out how they could help.

"We were too young to care for the animals at the shelter, but we could hand out pet adoption information at community events or donate something to the shelter. We decided to bake and sell home-made dog biscuits at the Rabies clinic to raise money to buy much-needed items from the shelter's wish list," said Monique.

"Our family adopted our dog Scout last year after we earned the Pet Care badge. We earned Let's Get Cooking Badge because we love cooking and wanted to make the dog biscuits. We made three kinds of dog biscuits: veggie, cheesy and peanut butter. Scout thought all three were yummy,” Gianna said. “So did our family!"

"We had a lot of fun rolling out the dough and cutting out heart and dog-bone shapes. We packaged about 150 bags of dog biscuits and labeled them with the flavor and the ingredients.

“We also made a colorful and informative backboard to display our experience of adopting our pet Scout at the Attleboro Animal Shelter and how important it is to give homes to pets that are in need.

“We set up a table with the biscuits at the Attleboro Rabies Clinic and sold the homemade dog treats to the people waiting in line. It was really cold outside that day, but we had fun. We loved seeing all the different kinds of dogs! We earned enough money selling biscuits to buy a Rubbermaid shed for the shelter. Wild animals are getting into the old broken shed and contaminating the food and cat litter. The new shed should keep the pet supplies safe for a long time."

Gianna and Monique also included a batch of their delicious homemade dog treats for the dogs at the shelter waiting for a second chance to have a new home.

The Desrochers enjoy Girl Scouts because it has given them opportunity to learn new things and have many different experiences. It has opened their eyes to strive to help make the world a better place. "Great pets like Scout can be found in shelters and we wanted to encourage other people to consider pet adoption.

“The animal shelter needs so many things to help them take care of the animals, and we wanted to help," added the girls.