Christ The King Lutheran Church, at 85 Mount Pleasant Road in Newtown, will be hosting a retriever reunion of sorts on Saturday, August 31. From 10 am until 1 pm, the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs will be returning, just in time for the Annual Newtown Labor Day Parade. 

Everyone is invited to this family friendly, furry, and free event being hosted by the church. The event will serve as a kickoff to Newtown Comfort, Christ the King’s new K-9 Ministry.

 The public is invited to join church members in welcoming back the teams and highly trained service dogs that have served our community since their arrival on December 15, including comforting the students and staff at Sandy Hook School each day since Chalk Hill opened its doors.

In March the LCC’s K-9 Comfort Dogs were recognized by the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Association with their Pet of the Year Award in recognition of their compassionate, dedicated service in Newtown. 

Activities for the event include signing giant paw prints for the church’s parade float, which will feature the comfort dogs; a demonstration of comfort dogs in action, an obstacle course for children, face painting, and story time with the dogs.

Newtown Kindness will be on site to serve lemonade, and light refreshments will be provided by the church.

The following day, Christ The King church will be adopting Maggie with a passing of the leash ceremony during service on Sunday, September 1, at 9:30 am. Newtown Comfort will continue to serve the wider community as a Comfort Dog Ministry based out of Christ The King Lutheran Church.

To date, Newtown’s sister congregation at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Danbury has done an outstanding job of organizing and facilitating both comfort dogs Maggie and Addie. The new opportunity will allow the two churches to partner and expand this ministry in offering the comfort dogs to those in need as each church will now have a K-9 Comfort Dog in house.

For more information about Christ The King Lutheran Church visit www.ctklutherannewtown.org. For more information about the LCC K-9 Comfort Dogs visit www.lutheranchurchcharities.org.