Triple Dog launches cans promoting dog adoption

Triple Dog Brewing Co. on First street has released a new line of cans featuring pictures of dogs that have been adopted from the Havre Animal Shelter to highlight the need for animal adoption.

“It’s just to get the word out there that there are a lot of dogs still up there that need a home,” Triple Dog owner Erin Garrity said.

Erin and her husband, Michael, who is also the brewmaster, own Triple Dog, and both have been working on this can line, which has been in the works for the last three months, but Michael Garrity says his wife was the driving force behind the idea.

Erin Garrity said she had an inspiration of her own.

“We did see a brewery in North Dakota come out with dogs that need to be adopted on their cans,” she said.

Garrity said that the reason they used pictures of dogs that had already been adopted is because of turnover.

Garrity said she didn’t want to advertise dogs that could be adopted tomorrow, especially because the cans take about two months to design, manufacture, and ship.

“We have five different cans, five different dogs,” she said.

The Garritys said the cans are made to raise awareness, but they hope to help the shelter more directly, too. The brewery announced that 25 cents from every purchase of the 32 oz. cans will go to Friends of the Havre Animal Shelter.

The brewery will fill the cans with whichever kind of beer the purchaser asks for.

Erin Garrity said the project is a branch-off from the brewery’s Mutt of the Month program, where the brewery sponsors an unadopted dog from the shelter and pays the adoption fee if anyone decides to take them. Every dog on these five new cans was part of this program.

“We’ve gotten a lot of people who have adopted their dogs up there, and if they were Mutt of the Month, we have a lot of those people come in here now that we might not have seen before,” said Garrity.

“I definitely think since we have been doing Mutt of the Month for so long that this is just another cool thing that we do. I’m not really expecting it to boost anybody running in here to get a can,” she said.

The Garritys said their brewery did not originate as a dog-themed establishment despite its name, which was taken from the triple-dog dare scene from the movie “A Christmas Story.”

“When we first started this place, the main goal we wanted was to do pint nights, and just help organizations around Montana,” Erin Garrity said, adding that when they did a pint night for RezQ Dogs, which focuses on rescuing dogs from Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy’s Indian reservations, it was one of their most successful events.

“At that moment we kind of knew,” she said. “… A lot of people who like beer like dogs, so we just kind of combined it.”

Erin and Michael Garrity are dog lovers themselves, having adopted their own mutt from the Havre Animal Shelter.

“I always joke around that we bought our house just so we could get a dog,” Michael Garrity said.

Erin Garrity said that in the very near future the brewery would get a canning machine that will allow them to make and sell six-packs, and there is a strong possibility that these cans may include pictures of dogs.

“It’s really nice to use our popularity to help support people, and organizations, and animals,” Michael Garrity said, “… We like to use the brewery as a vessel, to help as much as we can.”

Triple Dog Brewing will be holding its 2020 Hi-Line Winter Brewfest March 28, which is its sixth anniversary.