Going for Baroque at Barking for Bach

This Sunday afternoon, First United Methodist Church hosts Barking for Bach, a benefit concert for Friends of the Animals. The event is the brainchild of Paula Clary Shaw, Friends’ vice president and a locally renowned flutist.

Shaw and her husband, Brian, now an LSU assistant professor of trumpet at and the genius behind the Hot Jazz & Cool Nights summer concert series, first became aware of rescue while living in Austin in 2006. One day after walking around the lakes, they ventured into a nearby shelter “just to look” and left with Sally, a one-year-old schnauzer poodle mix.

After moving to Baton Rouge and finishing her master’s degree in performance, Paula became involved with Friends of the Animals.

While other new organizations—Project Purr and Yelp!BR—remove animals from the shelter and place them into adoption programs, Friends focuses on the pets who remain, awaiting reclamation by an owner, adoption, rescue or even euthanasia.

“We are there to make sure the dogs get correctly treated and walked,” says Friends’ founder Paula Schoen. “We work with the adoption dogs and the strays on a daily basis. We hold offsite adoption events for dogs and help people who come to the shelter looking to adopt a dog or cat.”

Last summer, Schoen was sidelined by an accident at the Animal Control that required a lengthy recovery, so she asked Shaw to coordinate the organization’s day-to-day volunteer and shelter operations. “People say, ‘I don’t know how you do it [spend long hours at Animal Control],’” Shaw reports. “My response is, ‘I don’t know how you don’t.’ Even if you can’t bear the thought of going in, [an animal lover] can give money or foster a dog or contribute in some other way. I think people would do more, if they knew more.”

In the course of promoting humane treatment of shelter animals, Friends has made a number of improvements to the kennels including installing ceiling fans, elevated dog beds with fleece covers and insulation in the open-air kennels and expensive grates for puppy kennels that keep tiny animals dry after the kennels are cleaned.

The non-profit’s latest and most ambitious project involves raising funds to purchase a t-building for use as a veterinary clinic. Dr. Marianne Fairchild technically serves as the facility’s part-time vet. In reality, her determination to provide medical care for sick or wounded shelter animals has yielded a grueling, seven-day-a week schedule—even without commensurate compensation. For years, Fairchild has made do in quarters so cramped that there’s no room for a post-surgical recovery bay. “Marianne works miracles everyday,” Shaw asserts. “She could do even more if she had adequate space.”

So, Friends aims to provide a larger, more efficient, surgical suite and recovery area housed in a quiet building away from the loud, stressful kennels.

The group had already raised $5,000 of its $20,000 goal, when Shaw decided to go for baroque. “The concert is my way of combining the things I love most—music and animals,” she explains. She quickly garnered the support of other animal-loving musician friends and Lamar Drummond, conductor of Music Shelters the Soul concert series at First Methodist Church. In fact, an anonymous patron who regularly supports the church’s series provided the funds for the musician’s fees, many of which have been ceded to Friends.

Beginning at 4 p.m., the inaugural Barking for Bach includes Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, Vivaldi’s Mandolin Concerto in D, Handel’s Eternal Light of the Divine and Hasse’s Laudate Coeli Dominum performed by soprano Kathlene Rich, guitarist Nicholas Ciraldo; violinist Stefka Madere; trumpet player Brian Shaw; flutists Paula Clary Shaw and Felicia Coehlo; and the United Methodist Choir conducted by Lamar Drummonds.

While there is no set ticket price, donations from concertgoers will be accepted following a performance, which is destined to be a howling success.

For more information, visit friendsoftheanimalsbr.org.

Click here for this week’s Creature Feature, which includes adoptable puppies and dogs available from Friends of the Animals.

Click here for this week’s City Lynx.