Today is Adopt the Internet Day and the launch of Petfinder's fifteen birthday.
15 years ago, if you wanted to adopt a pet, you had to look up your shelter in the phone book, and find out what hours they happened to be open. Some people found the sheer number of pets, the sights, the sounds, the smells, overwhelming, and would not go--even though they knew it was the right thing to do. They "would want to take them all home"--and ended up saving none.
They would get their next pet from the newspaper classifieds, from folks who did not yet realize that not spaying and neutering their pets, and allowing them to have "just one litter," was killing lost and homeless pets in our shelters.
If you decide to add a pet to your life now, you can start looking right from your desk at work, or your laptop in the morning. Even if you don't mind visiting a shelter to "browse," you can find your shelter's hours easily, or the times when a local adoption group will have their pets at Petco or Petsmart for you to visit. This new exposure for homeless pets has helped save millions of lives. It has put one shelter in touch with another to move pets from overfull shelters to shelters with space. It has enabled foster groups to assist shelters as well. It has enabled new foster groups to start up, knowing they have a place to feature the pets they rescue and care for.
Even if you rescued your pet off "the street," you helped a shelter by keeping that pet out of the shelter system and giving them room for another pet in need.
To celebrate the changes yesterday and today, and the changes we may experience tomorrow, please post a story today about your adopted pet, so your readers will keep adoption in mind.
And I'd really love it if you would link to the Adopt The Internet day page! Let me know in the comments when you post!
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