Dear Double J Friends,
We are into our third week of our social distancing/stay at home effort and we are still trying to adjust to a new way of life. We have been trying hard to keep connected by using Facebook Live, every day, in hopes of giving everyone a little bit of “Double J” love. While we’re grateful for our health and those of our staff, there are still feelings of loss associated with this isolation. We certainly miss our students, but agree that everyone’s health is the priority.
As I write this update, I have to express how blessed and grateful we are for all of the love and support from so many of our current and past customers and friends. Daily, we hear from so many people expressing how much they love Double J and what it has meant to them to be part of our community.
“We can’t thank you enough for the joy you bring to our daughter”; “Thank you for making such a difference in our daughters life”; “The community you have created for your riders is phenomenal”; “Sending positive thoughts and good wishes”.
These are just some of the personal and uplifting messages we have been receiving. To all of those people and those of you not mentioned, we appreciate you and are sincerely grateful.
Even though our doors are closed, our hard working animal caregivers are still here, making sure our animals are well fed and exercised. This presents us with an extremely challenging situation as the cost of feeding and care of our animals without income is insurmountable. In order to overcome this problem, we have come up with a few ways you can help.
Sponsorship – Double J is running a sponsorship program to help subsidize feeding all of our animals. You can choose your favorite horse, goat, sheep, chinchilla, guinea pig or other animal. Even Butters is available for sponsorship!! You will receive a sponsorship certificate, animal photos and more. Not only do these help us tremendously, but they make great gifts (for Easter or Birthday) too!! No matter how large or small your budget is, there is an animal that can be sponsored.
Sponsorship Link: https://doublejridingclubstore.square.site/s/search?q=sponsorship
Food/Scrap Drop-off – We are happy to take donations of food or food scraps of vegetables and fruits for the small animals. We have set up a large cooler by the front door of the farm house. Any food/food scraps can be dropped off in the cooler. These are used to feed the pigs, ducks, chickens, rabbits, goats, tortoises and many indoor animals.
Horse Cookies – Our horses (and even the other farm animals) love these!! If you are looking for a fun way to connect with the farm animals why not bake them some cookies. You can drop them off at the farm house in the cooler by the front door. We will then deliver them to the horses during our Facebook live sessions. If you leave a letter of who the cookies were made from, we are happy to share during the daily live session.
We’re also working hard on keeping connected with all of our customers through our Facebook Page, as I mentioned, we are doing a Facebook Live tour every day. In addition, we are now offering some great classes on Zoom. We encourage you to check those out! Beginning soon, we will also be sending out some riding e-lessons. Rest assured, we are working hard here to make sure you can stay connected, in any way we can. If you have any additional suggestions on what we could do, please reach out. We would love to hear from you.
Class Signup Link: https://doublejriding.wpengine.com/event/learning-at-home-schedule/
Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how you can help during the shutdown. Again, we are so grateful for any way you can contribute. Have a blessed Easter.
Thanks from all of us at Double J.