Write a Post, Help a Dog

Once again, for the 2011 BlogPaws conference, Pedigree is running its "Write a Post, Help a Dog" campaign. Last year, 391 bloggers participated, and Pedigree donated 20 pounds of its Healthy Longevity dog food to shelters for each post. Let's make it an even bigger success this year!

How you can help:

• The Write a Post, Help a Dog program is aimed at raising awareness of the four million dogs who wind up in shelters and rescues every year, as well as helping them all get food (our goal is 10,000 pounds of food in the next two weeks.)

• For each blog post about Write a Post, Help a Dog, mentioning the Pedigree Foundation, published anytime through midnight ET September 3, Pedigree will donate 20 pounds of its new dry Pedigree recipe food--its best recipe ever--to a shelter, because every dog deserves leading nutrition.

• Feel free to make your post more visually appealing by using either or both of the images seen in this post.

• Go to Two Little Cavaliers and sign up for the blog hop, so that everyone will see your post!

• If you don't have a blog, you can tweet about the campaign, or post about it on Facebook, so that your friends who do blog can participate.

• The Pedigree Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is committed to helping dogs by providing grants to shelters and rescues, and encouraging dog adoption. This year the Foundation has already raised $376,570 toward its goal of $1.5 million to fund grants that not only help shelters operate, but also foster shelter innovations.

There are many wonderful pets in shelters, homeless because of the human problems their families had, not problems with the pets. Always consider adoption when it's time to bring a new pet into your family! Some of the best experiences in my life have come from adopted pets, including my cat, Retsina, who in the shelter was believed to be ill with an unidentified illness, but turned out to just have a food intolerance for beef. She lived to be 16 1/2 , and raised two kittens when their own mama couldn't care for them. My sister adopted a  Lab from our local shelter, one of those dread Big Black Dogs,  who was her running companion as well as my niece's best friend and favorite baby-sitter till she (the dog!) died at thirteen.