PetSmart Adoptathon a Great Success
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 | Uncategorized | No Comments
By Janet Korts
PetSmart Charities has designated four national adoption weekends for the year 2011. Purina, Pro Plan and Tidy Cats are also sponsors of the National Adoption Weekend. The idea is to hold a three day adoptathon at all PetSmart stores with the goal to find homes for more than 16,000 pets in need. The first one, held in February of this year, was a huge success with 17,043 pets finding homes nationally.
The next adoption event was April 29th through May 1st. Locally it was held at the PetSmart store in Alcoa and attended by Blount County Animal Shelter, Animal Works and the Monroe County Animal Shelter and an army of volunteers and staff that supports those organizations. The local PetSmart store established a goal of placing 60 animals in their forever homes and when the last numbers were tallied, there were a total of 72 lucky dogs and cats who got to go home with a family. The three day event began on Friday evening under a large tented area at the end of the parking lot. The animals were displayed in exercise pens or large wire crates and there were lots of smiles. In some cases people just came to look, but others came to fall in love and acquire a new family member.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that according to the Humane Society of the United States, six to eight million cats and dogs enter animal shelters each year and at least three to four million are euthanized. HSUS reports that in the 1970s, American shelters euthanized 12 to 20 million dogs and cats annually. The decline in euthanasia represents progress, but so much more needs to be done. The animals that found homes through the PetSmart adoptathon were spayed or neutered as a condition for adoption and so they were removed from the indiscriminate breeding population of the area. It is important to promote the attitude that responsible pet ownership begins with controlling your pet’s ability to reproduce puppies or kittens that are a throw away commodity in East Tennessee.
The next three day PetSmart Charities adoption events will take place on September 9th through 11th and November 11th through the 13th, but on alternate weekends you will usually find smaller adoptathons taking place at PetSmart. When you adopt a shelter animal, you are not only saving a life, but are bringing a living creature into your home who will give you love and enrich your life. The pictures from the recent adoptathon tell the story.
The Monroe County Friends of Animals is a membership organization that supports the Monroe County Animal Shelter. If you would like to join, please contact Lana Phillips at (865) 856-9158 or send her an email at lana_phillips@bellsouth.net. Your nominal membership fee of $15 for an individual or $25 for a family goes directly to save a life by supporting the Rolling Rescue which transports animals to upstate New York and other locations where adoptive homes are waiting. If you have comments about this article, email me at janetkorts@bellsouth.net.
