If you love your pets and care about the plight of unwanted and abused animals in our community, and if you like to play golf, Paws Rescue has an event for you.

The no-kill animal rescue group is planning its first golf tournament fundraiser for Friday, April 21, at Clear Creek Golf Course, 1566 Tiffintown Road.

Registration begins at 8 a.m. with a shotgun start beginning at 9 a.m.

“People can register up until that day,” said Leigh Conerly, Paws Rescue president.

The day will include a continental breakfast for golfers, and the group is selling chicken dinners and will have a silent and live auction.

“We need hole sponsors and we need teams to play,” Conerly said.

A hole sponsorship is $100 and teams of four golfers is $280. Cost for an individual player is $70.

“If an individual wants to golf, but doesn’t have a team, we will put that person on a team,” she said.

Volunteers are need to help that day at Clear Creek, too.

“We wanted to do some new events, hoping to get our message out to more people,” Conerly said. “And we hope to make some much-needed funds. We thought a golf tournament would touch a different crowd of people than we have in the past.”

Paws Rescue works to foster dogs and cats in the homes of those involved with the group.

“We do not have a facility. There are no paid employees. We’re all volunteers. We have five board members and between five and 10 foster families, depending on the need,” Conerly said. “We are no kill, so we keep them until they are adopted. A foster family may have them for a week or years.”

Paws Rescue also works with organizations that send healthy but unwanted dogs from the south to forever homes in the north.

“Believe it or not, there is a need for dogs up north,” she said.

When an animal comes into the Paws Rescue program, it goes straight to a veterinarian is checked and treated for heartworm, mange, ringworm, receives all its vaccinations, including rabies, is spayed or neutered and treated for any other medical condition it may have. Thus the need for funds for the organization.

The group is in its 15th year of operation in the Vicksburg area.

For more information about the tournament, call 601-529-1535.