The Tihar Festival in the Park: Ceremony Goes to the Dogs
by Christy Caplan
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October 22, 2016 
The Tihar Festival takes place in Nepal and is held annually each October. Tihar is a five-day-long festival that signifies the festival of lights, and is considered to be of great importance as it shows reverence to not just the humans and the Gods, but also to the animals like crows, cows and dogs. The second day is called Kukur Tihar or Khichā Pujā (worship of the dogs).
On a rare sunny, October morning – the Portland based non-profit, Core Paws, recreated The Tihar Festival at Wallace Park in Northwest Portland with dogs from a handful of the shelters and rescues the organization partners with throughout the year. Their mission is to help create awareness for hard to place animals (through their Web site where rescues and shelters can highlight the animals they’re having trouble placing with families – this is yet another marketing platform to get the word out about these animals given these organizations often have limited budgets and resources) which was showcased in this intimate 30-minute ceremony with a handful of beautiful dogs and their families. Enjoy the pics!
Wordless Wednesday early!~
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What a wonderful celebration. I wish we’d do more things of the like here. Looks like a lot of fun! 🙂
Thank you so much! Core Paws is a pretty cool marketing platform and I thought this idea was fun too. It was VERY small but still cool to attend 🙂
This is so amazing! I remember I saw this kind of festival in the news while ago and thought it was so sweet! We would love to attend one if we have one around here. 🙂
What a great idea this was. That festival looks like so much fun. I agree with Lindsay, I wish they had more things like that here.
Well we definitely borrowed it for a PDX event!! 🙂 But the idea still worked — luckily.
What a great way to help the rescues and shelters. Looks like fun.
Thanks so much – It was a lot of fun to thank partners and rescues -and celebrate their animals!
It looks like such a happy festival and love the pretty colors!
Thanks! It was super small but the flowers were really pretty and the Tika Mark on the dogs worked out ok! 🙂
How festive!
Thanks! It was a good fall event to borrow!
Looks like you had wonderful weather for the event—and in Oregon, that’s not always a given!
Jean from Welcome to the Menagerie
I couldn’t believe the luck we had! We even had some sun for a few minutes….
How sweet is that!
Thank you!