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.

This popular blog named Ellen DeGeneres and Tal Ronnen as their #1 (tied) celebs of 2009. Ellen was cited for “her Halo brand of food for pets,” saying “I love what she is doing for the health of her viewers and their pets.”

According to actress and mom Eva Larue (of CSI Miami and All My Children fame), “There is a great new generation of mothers, and the Hot Moms Club speaks their language.”

Other animal-friendly or health-conscious celebrities on the list include Dr. Oz., Alicia Silverstone, Kathy Freston and Jason Mraz.

We think all caring pet parents qualify as “hot moms.”

Halo, Purely for Pets was founded two decades ago on the principle that excellent nutrition is the single most important factor in the quality of a pet’s life. This week, the National Canine Cancer Foundation recognized Halo’s commitment to your pet’s health in every can or bag of Halo Spot’s Stew, awarding us with the first-ever National Canine Cancer Foundation Seal of Excellence.

“I have been a big fan of Halo Pets for years,” says Gary D. Nice, president of NCCF. Some of the criteria that NCCF used to choose Halo include our high-quality, natural products and fresh food products developed by experts in pet nutrition.

We at Halo are honored to receive this award. “So many of us have lost four-legged loved ones to this terrible disease,” says David Yaskulka, Halo’s Vice President of Marketing Communications, who lost a cat to cancer. “While we all strive for a cure, health professionals are telling us to eat natural foods, avoid harsh chemicals, and lead active, healthy lives to have the best chance of avoiding cancer. Halo customers try to do exactly that for our pets.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, proper nutrition plays a tremendous role in the prevention of many diseases, including cancer: “Leading causes of death, which include heart disease, high blood pressure, many cancers, diabetes and stroke, are largely preventable through lifestyle choices such as eating more fruits and vegetables. Eating 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day is one of the easiest things everyone can do to lower their chances for all of the diet-related diseases.”

In Halo Spot’s Stew, we make sure to include a variety of fruits and vegetables including carrots, celery, yellow squash, zucchini, green beans, green peas, sweet potatoes, apples, blueberries and cranberries.

Search and rescue dogs are flying to Haiti from as far away as Taiwan and the United Kingdom to help search for the multitudes trapped beneath the rubble caused by Tuesday’s massive earthquake.

Closer to home, the Los Angeles, California-based Task Force 2, and Fairfax County, Virginia’s Urban Search and Rescue unit each deployed six teams of human-dog partners.

The California team was trained by the non-profit Search Dog Foundation. The pups include a Baxter, a rescued golden retriever; Dawson, a border collie; and Cadillac, an energetic, shiny black lab originally bred to be a guide dog.

Donations to the non-profit Guide Dog Foundation — and the latest news on the teams’ activities — can be made at www.searchdogfoundation.org and clicking “Donate.”

Please keep these brave humans and pups in your thoughts as they perform such gruesome and difficult work.

Who would have thought that a former fighting pit bull owned by disgraced NFL football player Michael Vick would end up as a docile darling visiting young schoolchildren?

Thanks to the efforts of our friends at Best Friends Animal Society, former fighters such as Hector have transformed into loving pets. The trainers at the Utah-based Best Friends took this fighter with battle scars scattered about his compact maple-brown body and trained him to love: he is now a gentle therapy dog who visits nursing home and hospital patients. And thanks to you, our loyal customers, Halo was able to donate 43,000 cans of Spot’s Stew to Best Friends to provide the animals at the Best Friends sanctuary with top-quality nutrition.

Hector now lives with a Minnesota family, and he’s appeared at a local elementary school as part of a lesson on compassion and empathy. Says teacher Amber Anderson: “I hope that these children never forget Hector’s story, and that they learn to treat animals and people with compassion; there is a connection between how we treat animals and how we treat people.”