Home 4 the Holidays
Drive under way to get pets "Home 4 the Holidays"
Memphis, Tennessee (and everywhere!) - The sixth annual "Home 4 the Holidays" adoption campaign kicked off with a little help from famous adoptee Benji and a minor league hockey team.
The adoption campaign aims to help place more than 300,000 homeless dogs and cats during November and December, through the cooperation of more than 1,600 animal shelters and rescues from around the world.
"Home 4 the Holidays will continue to break records," said Michael Arms (pictured at right with celebrity dog Benji), creator of the event and president of the sponsoring organization, the Helen Woodward Animal Center in San Diego County, California. Last year, the campaign included about 1,300 shelters and rescue groups, and more than 270,000 animals found homes.
Arms said, "What better gift can any of us give during the holiday season than to save the life of an orphaned animal?"
Arms and Gregory Castle, president of No More Homeless Pets in Utah, began this year's event November 5 by dropping the puck at a minor league hockey game between the Memphis River Kings and the Shreveport Mud Bugs.
Castle and Arms were upstaged, however, by an appearance from Benji -- the canine star of the "Benji" movies and a former resident of a Mississippi animal shelter. Benji and Joe Camp, writer and director of the "Benji" movies, arrived at the event in style, pulling up in a Rolls Royce and walking down a red carpet into the arena.
The event featured adoptable animals from local groups, as well as broadcast interviews about the campaign during breaks in the game. Co-sponsored by SOS Animals, a Memphis group that promotes adoption, awareness and education, the event was presented by The Animal Times.
The event followed a meeting in Memphis the night before that brought 150 people together to hear Arms and Castle talk about how to do more for animals in the mid-South region.
The annual Home 4 the Holidays campaign began in 1999 with a coalition of 14 San Diego-area shelters, and now has expanded to include shelters and rescues nationwide, as well as in countries like Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Australia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, South Africa, and Cyprus.
Actress Diane Keaton is the spokesperson for the campaign, which is co-sponsored by the IAMS Company. The pet food company provides starter kits to each adoptive family, and will give a total of $100,000 in grants to 20 participating groups at the conclusion of the campaign.
The theory behind the campaign is that, one way or another, people are going to bring pets home during the holiday season, so as many as possible should be from shelters and rescues. However, the program also encourages careful adoption screening, and discourages people from acquiring pets as gifts, unless it is a responsible decision by a parent to get a pet for a minor child.
"More families invite pets into their homes during the holidays than any other time of year," Arms said. "If our shelters turn them away, we may as well send them to a pet shop or puppy mill, while these orphans continue to wake up behind bars."
