Home 4 the Holidays

Rescues across the country help homeless animals find homes for the holidays

By Beth J. Bates

During the holidays, more households add pets to their families than any other time of year. Many times, these new pets are brought home without any forethought or research. And, unfortunately, many of these animals end up in shelters for various reasons like "the dog was too expensive" or "he got too big".


The Helen Woodward Animal Center has teamed with The Iams Company to promote their Home 4 the Holidays pet adoption campaign. Their goal is to save the lives of 1 million pets over the holiday season through education, awareness and special pet adoption events.

The campaign stresses that:

• A pet is a life-long committment and the decision to adopt a new pet should not be taken lightly.
  
• Adopting a new pet should be a family decision and everyone should be in agreement.
• Animals should NEVER be given to someone as a gift. Instead, talk to the recipient about your desire to help them find a new pet. Offer to take the gift recipient to a local shelter to pick out a pet. 

GoodDogz.org hosted our fifth annual Home 4 the Holidays pet adoption event on November 1. Our event hosted 20 pet rescues and 10 pet retailers with wonderful animal wares for the holidays. We will be compiling our final adoption numbers over the next few weeks, but we know that one of our rescues, K9 Lifesavers, a new rescue out of Washington DC, adopted 20 of the 30 dogs that they brought to the event. One of our retailers noted that they sold several collars and leashes to new dog adopters. We were thrilled by the turnout and excited that we were able to contribute to this incredibly worthwhile campaign.

The national Home 4 the Holidays campaign runs from October 1, 2008 to January, 5, 2009. During this time, participating rescue organizations will report how many animals are adopted working toward the goal of 1 million dogs.

And, as always, if you can't adopt an animal, consider donating to your local humane society or rescue organization!