Eight million pets enter America's shelters each year, and of those, three million healthy, treatable animals are euthanized because no one adopts them.
Those figures come from The Humane Society of the United States and Maddie's Fund, and they've joined with the Ad Council in The Shelter Pet Project, a new campaign designed to promote adopting pets from shelters. The Shelter Pet Project brings together the country's largest animal welfare organizations and shelters from all across the country to change the public's perception of shelter pets and encourage those looking to get a pet to make shelters their first choice for acquiring companion animals.
The humorous PSAs, created pro bono by Draftfcb Chicago, feature stories of how pets come into shelters through no fault of their own, but due to owners' issues, such as divorce, financial difficulty and ill-prepared owners. The TV, radio, print, outdoor and web ads direct audiences to visit a new comprehensive website, www.theshelterpetproject.org, to find out more information about how to adopt a pet from a shelter. The website includes a "Pet Personals" section, a matchmaking tool where users are asked questions about themselves and are then matched through the Petfinder.com database with potential pets from a local shelter or rescue group that will match their lifestyle.
In addition to the new PSAs and website, The Shelter Pet Project also has Facebook, Myspace and Twitter pages. We encourage you to become a "fan" and take a pledge to adopt a pet on Facebook, join our group on MySpace and sign up on Twitter to receive tweets about adoptable shelter pets.
