John Kenny is Running for Animals

John Kenny has announced that he will run the Vancouver City Marathon to raise awareness and funds for both Critteraid and Okanagan Small Dog Rescue. This has been a pretty big undertaking for him as he has never run a marathon before.

John has been training steadily over the last few months and last October, he completed the BMO Okanagan Half Marathon in less than two hours. It was a good start to his ultimate target of a full marathon in Vancouver in May 2012.

The 42-year-old engineer emigrated from Ireland to Canada in 2001. After working in Calgary for a number of years, he moved with his wife, Thao, to the Okanagan to take up a faculty position in the Civil Engineering Department at Okanagan College. 

They adopted their first dog, Roman, in 2006. Roman’s home away from home was Kozy Kennels. It was through Wendy McIntyre at Kozy Kennels that they learned about all the good work being done by Okanagan Small Dog Rescue. The Okanagan Small Dog Rescue finds foster and adoptive homes for surrendered and abandoned pooches.

During the West Kelowna forest fires in 2009, Canadian Disaster Animal Rescue Team (CDART) was providing food and shelter to local animals at Mount Boucherie Secondary School. It was through CDART’s efforts in 2009 that John became aware of all the tremendous work being done by Critteraid. CDART is the emergency animal rescue division of Critteraid.

As a result of the downturn in the economy, many charities are now finding it particularly hard to raise money. John would like to thank you for supporting his efforts and helping two very worthwhile causes in the Okanagan.