Dreams Come True – The Rose Parade
California here we come! Everyone knows I love Southern California, but I absolutely CANNOT wait to head to Pasadena for the 125th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade this New Year’s Day!
I’m simply OVER THE MOON that K9s4COPs was honored by the Tournament of Roses Association with a float entry to the Rose Parade. The theme for the 125th Tournament is “Dreams Come True,” rather apropos for what K9s4COPs has accomplished in just three short years. Thanks to our generous supporters, we have gifted 50 K9s to 23 agencies since 2011.
The Tournament of Roses offers us an unprecedented opportunity to share K9s4COPs with the masses. The parade itself will have more than 700,000 in attendance andmore than 840,000 online viewers, and it will be televised before 74 million!
We—my husband John, daughter Sinclair and I, along with K9s4COPs Executive Director Liz Lara Carreno, Harris County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Ted Dahlin, whose tragic loss of his K9 partner Blek inspired the creation of the foundation, and Harris County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Mike Thomas —have the grand honor riding the K9s4COPs float with a 55-foot tall replica of my personal protection dog Johnny Cash, a King Shepherd, in full K9 protective gear.
Award- winning Fiesta Parade Floats has constructed our entry entitled, “Working Together For Safer Communities.” They’re also constructing a float for Miracle-Gro, which I’m sure they’re going to need to complete ours! In keeping with tradition, the entire float—even Johnny Cash’s fur and Kevlar vest, is made entirely of flowers – or seeds and grasses rather.
Our inaugural Rose Parade float is dedicated to the heroic law enforcement K9 units across America and the men and women in blue who work so hard to keep our communities safe.
I am so honored to have K9s4COPs be a part of the time-honored American tradition, and I think John said something about a football game???