Happy Celebrate Shelter Pets Day!
Today is the 10th annual Celebrate Shelter Pets Day. This awareness event is designed to encourage the adoption of shelter pets by having owners tell their pet adoption stories on social media using the #CelebrateShelterPets hashtag.
Be sure to share your story today!
Today is National Cat Day, an annual event to raise awareness about stray and homeless cats.
To learn more about ways to help cats in need near you, check out these resources, courtesy of the Newsweek website.
The American Pet Products Association recently released its latest pet industry spending numbers and reports that we spent a record-breaking $72.56 billion on our pets in 2018, up $3 billion from the 2017 figures.
The survey found that millennial pet owners are driving the spending, with their willingness to pay more than previous generations for quality pet products and services.
Here are a few key spending figures from the APPA survey:
Premium brand pet foods and treats continue to be a driving factor in pet industry growth. Other areas of growth include nutritional supplements and digital pet-related technologies.
The APPA also notes that Americans, especially millennials, are acquiring greater numbers of pets through shelters and rescues, which may account for the decrease in live animal sales.
Check out the statistics, including spending estimates for 2019, on the APPA website HERE.
This Easter marks the first year a new California animal welfare law designed to protect rabbits goes into effect. California is the first state in the US to ban live rabbit sales at pet stores—an effort to cut back on the number of rabbits that are either abandoned, surrendered to shelters, or euthanized after Easter.
This is the same law that also bans the sale of commercially bred dogs and cats in pet stores. Pet stores can still house adoptable dogs, cats, and rabbits from local animal shelters.
According to an article from Reuters, animal shelters see a spike in rabbit intakes one to three months after Easter. The House Rabbit Society notes that thousands of rabbits, many still under one year old, are surrendered to California shelters.
Under the new law, rabbits will still be available for adoption from animal shelters and rescue groups, so California rabbit fans have the opportunity to provide a new forever home for rabbits in need!
April 11th is National Pet Day, a great time to celebrate our pets…and to raise awareness about the many dogs, cats, and other animals waiting for their new forever families in shelters right now!
Pictured above is recent FACE Success Story Pup, a 9 year old Staffordshire Bull Terrier diagnosed with intervertebral disc disease (IVDD). Pup received life-saving spinal surgery with the help of a FACE grant and is now doing well!
