Be the Change with a Shelter Drive By! Small effort, big reward

As many of you have heard, it’s National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week, though to be fair the news cycle has been dominated by other events. Such is life. As regular readers may remember, I usually end this week with the Blogathon, a 24 hour marathon of posts with prizes and fun, and potentially zombies.

But life happens and things evolve, and as it so happens I will be on a plane on Saturday, on my way back to Granada, Nicaragua. I am doing a one week course in Technical Animal Rescue with World Vets, as part of their efforts to increase their role in the evolving field of veterinary disaster response work. As we’ve seen much too recently, this is a need that will be ongoing, and as it so happens this is also something I have realized I am really, really excited about supporting. So I have my life vest, my helmet, but sadly enough my hiking boots wound up in a storage facility somewhere in the bowels of San Diego so I have to figure out what to do about that.

In the meantime, I DO have a project for everyone to Be the Change, because it’s not November without one. You all remember my Shelter Drive By post, right? Well, I’ve teamed up with Blog Paws and my friends at Iams, who are in the middle of their wildly successful Home for the Holidays campaign, and do I have a project for you. It’s awesome, and it doesn’t require a single person to eat pet food, which for some reason has become the highlight of my blogathon, at least according to people who are not me.

Home 4 The Holidays and how YOU can help

The Home for the Holidays Campaign, which runs from October through December every year since 1999, is a worldwide campaign to increase the visibility of shelter pets during the holiday season. In addition to the goal of adopting animals, Iams supports the initiative by donating millions of bowls of food to animal shelters during the program. Now normally I would put up a post about the Home 4 the Holidays campaign, you’d comment, Iams would donate a bowl of food, and that would be that.

But I have a better plan. Because if you aren’t in a position to adopt a pet this year, the other great way you can show your support is by being there for your local shelter. So this is where you come in.

Instead of me posting a story and you responding, I’m asking you all to make your own story. Find your local Home 4 The Holidays shelter or rescue and, in support of National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week, do something good for them. Bring in a donation in your own shelter drive-by. Write about a pet in need. Say whatever moves you about this place. Make this personal, because that is how problems are solved. You have through next week to think about it, and it can be as simple as bringing them an old towel from your closet or as complicated as you wish. I like simple. Simple is good and repeatable and easy and is what I will be doing.

Blog Hops and PRIZES GALORE

Next week, Blog Paws Be the Change for Pets will host a Blog Hop, and when they do, I invite everyone to post their blog link on that. We need 100 of you to participate in order for the following to happen:

1. Blog Paws will donate $1000 to Rescue Ink, a rescue devastated by Hurricane Sandy. You know these guys if you were at Blog Paws last year. They are amazing.

2. Blog Paws will also donate $1000 to one of the shelters featured in the Blog Hop.

3. The Blog Paws team and I will pick one post to be featured on the Iams Facebook wall between now and December. With 588,000 likes, that is a nice bit of exposure for you and your shelter. In order to be eligible for this prize, the post must feature a shelter participating in the Home 4 the Holidays campaign. To find one near you, click this link.

So what do you say? Can I count on you guys? Can we get 100 participants next week so we can donate $2000 to shelters in need? It’s SO easy, guys! Let’s DO IT!