The long, cold winters in Vermont can be rough on pets, particularly if they are strays with no place warm to find refuge. Without hesitation, we answered a call for help recently from Vermont-based rescue Save Our Strays for Halo Cloud Nine Healing Salve to heal frostbitten ears and paws cracked from road salt and ice.

“We have used it on our animals here and it worked really good,” says Lisa Haynes, founder of Save Our Strays, which received 120 jars of Cloud Nine Healing Salve. Always caring about a dog or cat’s nutritional needs, we also sent them 24 jars of Daily Greens and 24 jars of X-tra C, our vitamin C supplement.

Recently, a homeless cat that ended up at Save Our Strays sorely needed Cloud Nine. He had frost bitten ears with raw edges. “We used the salve on him and it worked incredibly,” says Lisa.

For the dogs, Lisa and her husband, Roy — who run the rescue from their Huntington home — coat their paw pads before a walk to prevent penetration of road salt and ice. “It bothers them alot,” Lisa says. “To put this (salve) on, it makes it so it doesn’t penetrate their little paws.”

And big paws, too. Lisa, owner of two St. Bernards, puts Cloud Nine on their paws after a romp in the snow to prevent irritation caused by the snow clumps stuck between their toes. “This works better than anything I’ve used,” Lisa says. “And the dogs seem to tolerate this alot better. The other stuff they don’t like the smell and run away from me, but they tolerate the application of really well and it’s not like they mind it.”

Last year, Save Our Strays received over 300 cases of Spot’s Stew for its cats, and 570 for the dogs, a donation worth over $32,000. Click here to read more about the donation and Save Our Strays.

Lisa says that feeding her rescued animals such high quality food creates shiny coats that people marvel at. “We get alot of comments on our strays and ask, ‘How do their coats look so good?’” says Lisa, who is down to the last cases of Spot’s Stew. “I try to make sure the dogs have human grade ingredients in their food, it makes a huge difference.”

Shannon Bahrke, a bronze medalist in this year’s Olympic women’s moguls, is also a champion for animals.

Bahrke, founder of the Silver Bean Coffee Company, brewed up a way to help our furry friends with Best Friends Animal Society, America’s largest sanctuary for abused and abandoned pets.

For every bag of Silver Bean’s Best Friends special blend you buy, Best Friends and the animal on the front of your bag of coffee receives $5.

Bahrke tells NBC that her love of animals is one thing people don’t know about her.

“Whether it’s my own kitty cat or somebody else’s dog or fish in a tank, I just love animals,” Shannon said. “And I really have a soft spot about them. I’m going to be the cat lady, that’s what I tell everyone, I’m going to be the cat lady with like 30 cats because I love them all.”

Halo loves to help Best Friends’ furry friends too. We are longtime supporters, and recently donated 3,599 cases – or 43,188 cans – of Spot’s Stew for its 400-plus dogs.

Let’s donate a bazillion meals of Halo to homeless kitties! Play Meow Trivia at Freekibblekat.com today (2/5/10) and Halo is donating 5x the normal kibble. As a reminder, here’s yesterday’s post on the event:

On Friday, February 5th, don’t forget to play for the kitties on Freekibble.com!

The website and Halo, Purely For Pets have teamed up to generate five times the kibble (50 pieces) each time you play Freekibblekat.com (the cat section of Freekibble.com) for homeless cats.

Freekibble.com founder Mimi Ausland, 13, hopes that the event — called Freekibblekat Hi-5 — attracts some 65,000 players to the site that day. (On normal days, 40,000 to 50,000 people play daily; for each question answered, right or wrong, 10 pieces of kibble are raised.)

Freekibble.com’s first Hi-5 event on November 5th was a huge success: twenty-thousand meals for dogs were raised. “We hope to raise that for the cats,” says Mimi. “I know there arealot of cat lovers out there.” As of this week, FreeKibble has raised and donated 400,000 pounds of cat and dog food to scores of shelters across the U.S.

The food generated from Friday’s gaming is going to about six shelters in the Southeast; Mimi hopes the donation feeds each shelter’s cats for many months. Says Mimi: “It’s a big thing for them because it’s unusual to get high end cat food.”

Click here to send your friends and family an e-card to tell them to play on February 5th.

And click here to play FreekibbleKat.

On Friday, February 5th, don’t forget to play for the kitties on Freekibble.com!

The website and Halo, Purely For Pets have teamed up to generate five times the kibble (50 pieces) each time you play Freekibblekat.com (the cat section of Freekibble.com) for homeless cats.

Freekibble.com founder Mimi Ausland, 13, hopes that the event — called Freekibblekat Hi-5 — attracts some 65,000 players to the site that day. (On normal days, 40,000 to 50,000 people play daily; for each question answered, right or wrong, 10 pieces of kibble are raised.)

Freekibble.com’s first Hi-5 event on November 5th was a huge success: twenty-thousand meals for dogs were raised. “We hope to raise that for the cats,” says Mimi. “I know there arealot of cat lovers out there.” As of this week, FreeKibble has raised and donated 400,000 pounds of cat and dog food to scores of shelters across the U.S.

The food generated from Friday’s gaming is going to about six shelters in the Southeast; Mimi hopes the donation feeds each shelter’s cats for many months. Says Mimi: “It’s a big thing for them because it’s unusual to get high end cat food.”

Click here to send your friends and family an e-card to tell them to play on February 5th.

And click here to play FreekibbleKat.

If you’ve been following the devastating news from Haiti, the photos of bloodied children and adults is heartbreaking. But what about the animals? And what can you do to help in Haiti?

A multi-agency group called Animal Relief Coalition for Haiti (ARCH) is now in Haiti assessing what the animals need. One of ARCH’s members is a Halo friend, the Best Friends Animal Society, America’s largest sanctuary for abused and abandoned pets.

The Utah-based rescue is accepting donations that go directly to help Haiti’s homeless and sick animals. Click here to make a donation.

If you want to go to Haiti and help, Best Friends is lining up volunteers with a history of responding to major disasters and with experience handling small and/or large animals. Click here for more information. If you are interested in volunteering, please email bfvolcoord@bestfriends.org.