Around Town

Pet-Loving Girl Scouts Fund Purchase of Dryer for New Canaan Animal Shelter, Plan Future Projects

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For these many years, whenever a dry towel or blanket was needed for a dog or cat at the New Canaan Police Department shelter, Animal Control Officer Maryann Kleinschmitt had to wait for the item to hang-dry from its last use—a worrying prospect in the damp shelter, where animals must be dried regularly after walks. Sometimes it’s raining, as it has been this week, and even when it’s not, the grounds outside the shelter at the Lakeview Avenue Transfer Station often are dusted with the salt that the Highway Department uses, and if it isn’t washed off, the animals can get sores on their paws. Thanks to a group of dog- and cat-loving Saxe Middle School girls, warm and dry towels are now just minutes away for Kleinschmitt. “I am so excited about having this dryer,” Kleinschmitt said Tuesday, leaning against the shelter’s newly installed appliance and surrounded by members of Girl Scouts Troop 198 as a Nor’easter raged outside. Following a field visit with Kleinschmitt at the shelter in the spring, the seven girls in the Troop decided to use their cookie money to fund the purchase of the dryer.

Around Town

New Canaan Girl Scout Seeks Longtime Townies for Local History

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New Canaan resident Louly Kaplan accompanied her grandmother to Ellis Island recently, and the elder woman began crying to see—for the first time—her own mother’s and grandmother’s names on a manifest for a passenger ship from the Old World. Louly, a New Canaan High School sophomore (and cheerleader), is a Girl Scout, and she’d been trying at that time to land on a project for the organization’s highest achievement: the Gold Award. What Louly has in mind, thanks at least in part to the experience with her grandmother, is a history of New Canaan as told by people who have lived through it. It’s something Louly said she feels is important, as many New Canaan teens are unaware of our shared local heritage. She can be reached at looboo@cademo.com if any reader of NewCanaanite.com here thinks they may be able to help.