Oh, petfinder. If I got paid a nickle for each hour I spent gazing longingly at Chows and Chow mixes on your site, I would be a gazillionaire.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with petfinder, it is a website dedicated to placing homeless animals in “forever homes.” Petfinder not only places dogs and cats in homes, but also finds homes for rodents, reptiles, birds, and farm animals. This coming week, Petfinder celebrates its 15th birthday – happy birthday, Petfinder!
Dogsters never miss a party, so dogster and catster have partnered with petfinder in sponsoring “Adopt the Internet” Day on March 15th, 2011. This Tuesday, all of dogster’s bloggers will be featuring blog entries on rescue and adoption, so stay tuned and make sure you visit the home page on Tuesday!
Do you want to join the party? You can follow Petfinder on Facebook and Twitter to get updates on Tuesday.
You can also participate! The details are available at this link and include a great contest plus suggestions for how you can spread the word to help promote pet adoption, including:
What You Can Do
Add a badge to your Web site to show your support.
Take our pledge that you will tell one person about pet adoption on March 15. By pledging, you’ll enter for a chance to win one of 10 Pet Hair Eraser Vacuums from BISSELL.
If you have a Twitter handle, share an adoptable Petfinder pet on Twitter with the hashtag #adopttheinternet, and if you have a website add a badge like the one above.
Caption a Petfinder adoptable-pet photo on ICanHasCheezburger! The photos with the best captions will be featured on the ICanHasCheezburger.com homepage on March 15.
On March 15, donate your Facebook status and photo to an adoptable Petfinder pet. Simply replace your photo with one from the Adopt-the-Internet All-Stars gallery and post one of these messages:
More than 320,000 pets are waiting for homes on Petfinder.com. Help Petfinder Adopt the Internet today and find forever homes for as many as possible!
I adopted my pet from Petfinder and now I want to help get this pet adopted! If you want to help pets in need of forever homes, please repost this!
On March 15, share an adoptable Petfinder pet on Twitter with the hashtag #adopttheinternet.
Add a link to your blog, Facebook or Twitter post to this page! (Come back on March 15 to find out how.)
For those of you who live with shelter or rescue dogs, foster, or volunteer, here are a few additional ways you may be able to help!
- Rescue dog adopters, foster parents, and volunteers – Donate your dogster diary entry for that day to your favorite rescue or shelter dog – discuss your adoption/fostering experience, including links to your favorite rescue(s), etc.
- Foster parents – informative, honest blogs about the fostering experience are great. Potential foster parents have lots of questions: who is responsible for medical/behavioral expenses, supplies, etc., the foster parent or the rescue? How can you keep resident dogs safe and healthy while minimizing stress for all involved parties when introducing a new foster animal to the home environment? If you know a vet, groomer, trainer, or pet sitter in the area who offers discounted services to foster parents, blog about this – let people know about the resources that are available to help them. Do you have a “failed foster,” a foster dog that somehow ended up staying forever? Perhaps a tribute is in order!
- Shelter or rescue volunteers – consider posting about your rescue experience, a memory of your most successful adoption or a tribute to a dog you were unable to save. Post about what people in the community can do to help, specifically what sort of volunteers you are looking for (photographers, people to help with walking, maintenance people, cleaning staff, etc.), what is on your shelter’s wish list, etc.
- Spread the word! Post in the dogster forums, share an email with your dog loving friends, post to your favorite yahoo group, etc.
