Today, USPS is unveiling its 2010 social awareness stamp, “Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet” on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.  In celebration, Halo and our co-owner Ellen, plan to donate 1 million meals to shelter pets awaiting adoption.

According to Halo CEO Steve Marton, “We’re here to help make sure this amazing social awareness translates into a meaningful difference for shelter pets. That’s why we’re working with everyone to reach the 1 million meal donation of Halo Spot’s Stew. I’m 100% confident we will achieve our goal of feeding 1 million meals to dogs and cats waiting to be adopted.”

Animal lovers can make sure the 1 million meal donation is achieved by visiting www.halopets.com/stamps.

Opportunities to trigger donations include signing up for a free holistic pet care newsletter, following Halo and its nonprofit partner Freekibble on Twitter, using Halo coupons, and more. Already, over 150,000 Halo meals have been donated to shelters this year towards the 1 million meal goal.

Adopt a Shelter Pet stamps can be pre-ordered at www.stampstotherescue.com, and will be available at all US Post Offices starting April 30.

From now until mid-May, visit your local post office to see this cool Halo “Give Shelter Pets a First Class Meal” poster!

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.

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.

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.

Soon after, Utech received an email from Freekibble.com with the news that Halo, Purely for Pets would be sending her a few rather large donations, 5,300 pounds in all, of dry Spot’s Stew. “As soon as I read it I put my head down and started crying,” says the 41-year-old Utech. “It was a prayer that was answered.”

For many months before the donation, Utech and a friend frequently emailed Freekibble.com founder Mimi Ausland, 13, after reading about Mimi last year in People magazine (authored by me, the author of this story).

Scores of rescues email freekibble.com seeking food, yet Safe Haven stuck out, and not only for persistence. “We realized that Melissa works very hard and does some amazing work,” says Mimi. “Also, she is in an area that is very hard hit with the bad economy and we knew that the food would really be helping her out.”

One of the beneficiaries is Chopper, a boxer mix who was in bad shape when a local vet gave him to Utech. “When he came in he was skin and bones,” says Utech. “He had been running free getting food wherever he could find it.” Utech nursed him from near-starvation to a healthy, vibrant pup by feeding him Halo. Utech shared the donation with her local shelter, and families struggling financially.

The dogs gleefully gobbled it up. “Wouldn’t you rather go to a really nice restaurant and have a nice steak and a real salad versus Burger King?” says Utech. “Wouldn’t you like to give your animals the best? It makes them feel better, it makes their skin and coat better.”

A lifelong animal lover, Utech — owner of eight dogs, and a former limo driver — entered the business of taking care of dogs with her own pet-sitting business. “I hate to see people go on vacation and have a good time while their dogs were in a kennel,” says Utech.

In 2006, she founded Safe Haven after learning of two dogs left at the local shelter and facing imminent euthanasia. Utech borrowed $500 from friends to rescue the dogs; she ended up fostering them for seven months.

The experience forever changed this mom of 16-year-old twins. “Once I went to the shelter and saw how desperate people’s situations are and how desperate the animals are…haven is like heaven, and they’re heaven to me,” she says. “They have unconditional love, like God does. I have seen some animals in horrible situations, no matter how abused there are, how much they are starved, they turn around.”

Utech created a network of foster homes for the many strays so prevalent in her area. She has an agreement with the local shelter that they not euthanize any dog or cat, allowing her to instead find homes for all of the animals.

And there are multitudes: from November 5th to December 8th, for example, she found homes for 78 strays. “I always dread going to the shelter, I know there’s more there and it makes me sick to my stomach seeing beautiful animals thrown away like trash,” she says. “And then when you see they go to a loving family, the dogs go from rags from riches. That keeps me going, that dog becomes a treasure.”

In 2008 alone, Utech found homes for some 2000 cats and dogs while in 2009, over 800 strays found forever families. She speaks to school children about the importance of spaying and neutering, and is working on legislation to limit the outdoor chaining of dogs. And, Utech is working on funding the construction of a shelter of her own on 4.5 acres of donated land. “It’s big now,” says Utech of Safe Haven. “It’s more than I could have ever imagined.”

To donate to Safe Haven via Pay Pal, log on to www.safehavenadoption.com and click on the donate tab at the top of the page. Or, donations can be sent to Safe Haven, P.O. Box 962,Scottsboro, AL 35768.

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.”

It only seems a given that, as Freekibble.com announced a contest for kids to write an essay about why their local shelter is special, Spencer, now 8, composed a moving essay to thank the Glynn County Animal Services for Cuddles.

“My shelter is special to me because they keep dogs like Cuddles safe and feed them until they get adopted to families like mine,” writes Spencer. “He makes me feel good when I come home from school. I think Cuddles is a lifesaver for me. Sometimes when I come home from school, I feel kinda sad and tired. Cuddles is there to greet me with slobbery kisses and a happy wagging tail.”

Freekibble.com founder Mimi Ausland, 13, was moved by Spencer’s words. “This one I absolutely loved,” says Mimi. “I love the part that Cuddles is a lifesaver to him, and I can relate to the part about being sad and tired after school. His essay makes me want to go over there and give him a hug.”

Mimi picked Spencer’s essay as one of five winners of the Kibble Krusaders Kontest, chosen from almost 500 entries from all over the country, and earning the Glynn County shelter $1000 worth of Halo Dinner Party. Says proud mom Vicki Nixon: “He’s a smart little guy.”

Spencer, a third-grader, lives in a home filled with animals: Cuddles, four rescued cats and a litterbox-trained bunny. A favorite pastime of Spencer and Cuddles is visiting the beach and playing fetch with a tennis ball. “Two years ago you couldn’t say beach around him because he would go nuts,” says Spencer. “He would start running around the house and and he would tell us he was ready to go.”

Spencer frequently visits the home of his aunt, Becky Kryos, who helped him write the essay, a home where he plays with her five rescued cats. And Spencer’s mom notes that when there is a stray in the neighborhood, people know to bring the animal to their home. Naturally, this ethos has rubbed off. As Spencer writes: “Maybe more people need to visit their animal shelter to find a lifesaver like Cuddles. I think shelter animals know they are special and that they can give love and kindness to a person as much as a person can give food and shelter and love to them.”

The Humane Society of the United States has partnered with clothing, jewelery, and a host of other companies for the holiday gift-giving season. Every gift you purchase through one of these sellers benefits the Humane Society, which promoted Halo’s and Freekibble.com’s Hi-Five event on its website.

Other gifts include a coffee club membership and magazines. One cool aspect of buying the reasonably-priced wines from Caravintas Winery — you can even create a label using your own dog. For more infomation, click here.

The animals you adopt will remain at Green Chimneys, but you or your gift recipient receives a certificate of adoption with a photo of the animal and his or her life story. And you can even visit him or her on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Your donation will help with food, veterinary care and shelter for your animal, and make sure he or she lives a happy life. Prices range from $25 for the adoption of a rabbit, pig or goat; $50 for a bird of prey, llama or sheep; and $100 for a horse or sheep.

For more information or to adopt, click on Green Chimneys Adopt A Animal or contact Lillian Roode at (845) 279-2995, ext.106, or by email at lroode@greenchimneys.org or visit.

There are colorful collars, T-shirts, jewelery, ornaments, doggie jackets and sweaters, hand-blown candles, and pet memorial bracelets and pillows.

You can learn much more about the ASPCA gifts at ASPCA Store.