Dogs, Dolls, Bears and Kids…Oh My!

I thought I had seen it all.

The other night, Linda and I went into PetSmart to replenish our supply of training pads for our 15-year-old deaf, demented, and incontinent Jack Russell. We turned down the appropriate aisle and there, in a quilted blanket in the child seat of a shopping cart, sat a down jacketed miniature Doberman wearing pink, zippered boots.

We stopped and complimented her Highness on her choice of footwear. She looked at us as if to ask: “Well, what did you expect? That I would go out barefoot?”

“I guess when dogs go shoe shopping they always pick up a couple of pair,” I said to Linda. “Lucky dogs,” said she.

We picked up the training pads for Grandma Mosey and headed home.

The next day I, along with some of you, noticed that Andy Baker had posted some pictures of his latest trip to Romania on behalf of his ministry Remember the Children. I was stunned by what I saw: an 8 or 9 year old kid standing in the snow in flip flops. When I wrote Andy and asked him about it he said, “He’s one of the lucky ones. I saw a lot of kids out in the snow with no shoes at all!”

I was stunned by that. I know there are millions of kids in the world who have no shoes. I always thought of those kids as being in Africa or in Latin America. It had never occurred to me that there could be children in cold climates who have no shoes and no way to get any! (I blogged about that here.)

The other night I was chatting with Buzz Lance, another friend and former student at Milligan College, about my little project. Buzz observed that he had just seen an ad for an American Girls Doll and that even she had shoes. His comment reminded me of our little family forays into “Build a Bear”. In the good old U.S.A. even our stuffed bears are well shod. Later, I remembered that stylin’ miniature Doberman with her two pairs of zipped, pink boots.

We live in a country so wealthy that our dolls and dogs and stuffed bears have shoes while real, live honest-to-God children in rural Romania run around in the snow barefoot?

The more I thought about that the more outraged I became. That kids run around in the snow barefoot is an outrage, especially when you or I could go and buy a pair of decent shoes at Payless for $7 to $10 on sale, give them to Andy, who will be more than happy to deliver them.

But then I got to thinking: Why stop at 100 pair of shoes? Why couldn’t we get together 10,000 pairs of shoes in 10 months to send with Andy over to poor, country, gypsy kids in Romania?

I know that sounds like a lot but it’s not.

Follow this:

 Could you buy one pair of kid’s shoes for $10 or less?

 Do you know 10 people you could ask to do the same thing?

 Could you ask them to ask 10 people?

 Etc. etc.
4 generations of just 10 people buying one inexpensive pair of shoes would provide over 10,000 pairs of shoes.

If we really set our minds to it, we could do that in a month but, so as not to get haughty about it, we’ll take ten.

It just seems to me that something so simple, so doable…well, it would be shameful for us not to do it.

But then I thought about poor old Andy…

What would he do if we shipped him 10,000 pairs of shoes in 10 months?

So, I dropped Andy a line and asked : “Just for the fun of it, how would you handle 10,000 pairs of  shoes?”

“With joy”, he said.

So, I say we slam Andy with shoes.

Will YOU help me do this?

Here’s how…
(1) Send a cash donation to Remember the Children and let them buy shoes.  You can donate online or, if you prefer to send a good, old fashioned check in the mail send your donation to

Remember the Children
2611 W. 16th St.
Bedford, IN 47421

(for: Shoe Project)

(2) Buy a pair of shoes (or more than one!)  and send them directly to the address above.

(3) Conduct a shoe drive in your church or with your friends and send a bulk load of shoes to Andy.  (Ditto on the note…)

(4) Network: 10 x10 x 10, etc. and send shoes to Andy

(5) Use your ‘voice’. These social networking technologies allow us all to become “Ants with Megaphones”. Use a blog or Twitter or Facebook to tell others what we all are doing.

For about $10 and with a little effort and the use of your own voice, we could easily send 10,000 pairs of shoes to the poorest of the poor in rural Romania.

Remember: Somewhere a miniature Doberman is admiring her shoes…all 4 of ‘em!