<\/p>\n
One Mancos girl celebrated her birthday on Tuesday by giving a New Year\u2019s present to the Cortez Animal Shelter.<\/p>\n
Olivia Jukes, who turned 9 on Dec. 13, decided to ask her friends for animal supplies instead of presents at her birthday party this year. She and her mother, Tressa Jukes, delivered their collection of donated dog and cat food, toys, paper towels, blankets and other supplies to the shelter on Tuesday. Olivia has several pets at home, and is always wanting to adopt more, her mother said.<\/p>\n
Tressa Jukes gave Olivia the idea of donating to the animal shelter, and she said the 9-year-old ran with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like animals, and it was around Christmas time, so I thought it\u2019d be nice,\u201d Olivia said. \u201cI thought that the animals would really like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having a December birthday also made it easier to be generous.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe figured Santa Claus would be bringing her plenty of presents for Christmas,\u201d Tressa Jukes said.<\/p>\n
Olivia said she and her friends had fun at her party, painting fairy houses and collecting the gifts. Olivia\u2019s family also bought a few donations, and by Tuesday they had enough pet supplies to fill up the trunk of their car. Olivia added to the gift by drawing a picture of some dogs and cats playing together, which she gave to the shelter employees.<\/p>\n
She and her family originally intended to drop the donations off the week before Christmas, but weather, work and the shelter\u2019s closure for the holidays kept getting in the way. Both Tressa Jukes and the shelter director, Jennifer Crouse, said they were relieved they finally made it on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Even though the family has moved around \u2013 Olivia\u2019s father, Les Jukes, is a retired member of the Coast Guard \u2013 they have always made room for pets in their lives. Jukes\u2019s 17-year-old cat was adopted from a shelter, and they\u2019ve adopted several dogs in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a family thing,\u201d Tressa Jukes said.<\/p>\n
After delivering their gifts, Olivia and her mom spent time saying hello to the animals at the shelter \u2013 about a dozen dogs and a cat. They would both like to adopt another dog or cat someday, but Jukes said they have their hands full at the moment.<\/p>\n
Olivia said she may donate to the shelter for her next birthday, too.<\/p>\n
The Cortez Animal Shelter is always accepting donations during business hours. Right now one of their greatest needs is food for kittens, puppies and adult pets. They also need cleaning supplies, such as bleach, Pine Sol, paper towels, dish soap, dryer sheets, Lysol wipes, powdered laundry soap and dishwasher detergent. To find out more about how to donate, or how to adopt a pet from the shelter, contact Jennifer Crouse at 970-565-4910 or jgoodall@cityofcortez.com<\/a>. The shelter is located at 2791 E. Main St. and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" gives to animal shelter for her birthday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[83,60],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-67321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-mancos","tag-montezuma-county"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67321"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=67321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}