Walking Together This Spring: Get Outside With Sunny’s Helping Paws
After a long winter, people and their pets are ready to move again. We are too.
Over the next few months, Sunny’s Helping Paws will be at two community events that reflect what this organization is built around — the people and pets who need each other most, and the community that makes that support possible — and we hope to see you there!
TerraLoco $5 5K
Monday, May 18, 2026
We’re thrilled to have been invited to participate in TerraLoco’s $5 5K program this year!
It’s an incredible chance to gather our community in person for the first time this year (many of us ever!), on a spring evening, with your dogs welcome alongside you.
Here’s how it works: arrive at TerraLoco’s Rochester store (location details HERE) anytime after 5:30 PM on Monday, May 18. Pay $5 to register, and every dollar of that goes directly to Sunny’s Helping Paws. Then run, walk, or wander the course at whatever pace feels right. Leashed dogs, strollers, and all abilities welcome.
We’ll be there as a team and would love for you to join us. If you’ve been following our work from a distance, this is an easy way to show up in person and meet the people behind it while getting your steps in!
Minnesota Lymphoma Walk
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Last spring, Nora walked this same route alongside Mary and her dog Leah — the dog that Dale, one of Nora’s former patients and one of our guiding lights, had brought home just a year earlier after receiving hopeful news at a January appointment.
Note: If you haven’t read Dale’s story, we’d encourage you to do that HERE.
To return to this walk a year later, this time with Sunny serving as a Comfort and Healing Ambassador for the Lymphoma Research Foundation is a full-circle moment that we don’t take lightly.
For Nora, our founder, this recognition is personal. Her years in healthcare gave her a direct view of how much patients depend on their pets during treatment, and how hard it can be when illness makes that bond harder to maintain. The worry of “who will look after my pet while I’m in the hospital” is something she heard again and again. That experience is a core part of what shaped Sunny’s Helping Paws.
Being part of a walk that brings together patients, families, and caregivers navigating lymphoma feels like exactly where we belong. Sunny will be at the event at Lake Nokomis greeting people, offering comfort, and representing something we believe deeply: that healing has a lot to do with connection. With presence. With the relationship between a person and their pet on a difficult day.
Support Our Spring Goal
This spring we’re working toward a $10,000 fundraising goal to continue expanding care for pets and their people in our community. Every dollar helps ensure that a medical crisis doesn’t also mean losing a beloved pet.
Every person who walks with us, donates, or simply shares our story helps us reach the next family who needs us. That’s how this grows. We’re grateful you’re here, and we hope to see you in person this spring.
Blog contribution by Sophie Foxman, SHP Communications and Marketing Director
