“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.”

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!

Click here for local listings.

There are several national and local animal welfare organizations that have programs like pet food banks, low-cost veterinary clinics and foster care programs to help people keep their pets.

The Humane Society of the United States has a list of organizations that offer financial aid to people with pets. The list of pet financial aid organizations is listed by nationwide, and some are listed alphabetically by state.

Also Halo, Purely for Pets proudly supports many pet food pantries nationally. Halo has donated thousands of cans of Spot’s Stew to several shelters and rescues, which has been distributed to pet owners in need.

Another great resource is No Paws Left Behind; is a focus driven non profit organization, designed to help pet owners who are facing foreclosure.

You can also contact your local shelters and rescue organizations. Most have lists of local resources for acquiring pet food, pet-friendly housing and low-cost veterinary care.

If you must move out of your home, look for pet-friendly housing. Here are some websites that list pet-friendly apartments and homes for rent, Pets911 and PeopleWithPets.com.

While it is still important to visit your veterinarian yearly for an examination, you can cut out many unnecessary tests and procedures by keeping your pet as healthy as possible throughout the year; read Dr. Donna Spector’s article “Tips on Lowering Veterinary Bills and Pet Expenses“.

Halo is a proud supporter of Best Friends Animal Society; their web site is another great resource for pet owners to find pet-friendly housing and pet financial aid organizations.

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.

Here’s some of what they had to say: “On an average day, FreeKibbleKat posts a cat-related multiple-choice trivia question, and each visitor’s answer triggers the donation of 10 pieces of dry cat food to a shelter. But during Friday’s Hi-5 event, it’s upping the ante, donating five times the amount of cat food it normally would (that’s 50 pieces of cat food, kids) for each response. (Pet food company Halo is sponsoring the event…”

They were also kind enough to talk about our continuing donations of one meal for each follower of @freekibble and @halopets on Twitter. Let’s keep feeding those pets waiting to be adopted!

Click over to our News page for the story.

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.

We needed to help. Earlier this month, with the help of Freekibble.com, Halo donated almost 6,000 cans of Spot’s Stew to McKamey and two other shelters and rescues in Tennessee, which have been distributing the food to pet owners in need.

“We are absolutely thrilled to do it,” says Lisa Reeves of the Nashville Humane Association, which gives out their Halo Spot’s Stew every Sunday and Wednesday. “If we have (the food) and we can help someone, we will. We try not to turn anyone away.”

In addition to the food, all three organizations (the third is A New Leash on Life in Lebanon) received a variety of other Halo products, including Herbal Healing Salve and X-tra C, an instant vitamin C powder.

“It makes me feel great to know that this food is getting to people who really need help feeding their animals,” says Mimi Ausland, the 13-year-old founder of Freekibble.com. “I know that because of this, people will be able to keep their pets and feed them a really good food.”

The Nashville Humane Association first started distributing food in November, 2008, and since then have helped some 500 families keep their pets. “I think it’s hard for some of these people to come in,”
says Reeves. “You have families who never had to ask for help, and now they do.

“People have been in tears, they’ve said, ‘I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t here,’” Reeves continues. “It’s sad, i think pride gets in the way of some people but they have to come in and do it.”

On November 5th, Freekibble.com had a Hi-5 promotion: for every trivia question someone answered about a dog or cat, 50 pieces of of kibble would be donated by Halo. That day, some 60,000 people played Freekibble.com, raising 5 million pieces of kibble, or the equivalent of 20,000 Meals of Halo. And the need to help these financially-strapped pet owners continues to grow.

At McKamey Animal Center, there has not been the usual post-holiday slowdown in animal surrenders, says Sebes, noting that the 26,000-square-foot shelter now has 288 dogs and puppies, 455 animals in all. McKamey has shared the donation with two local food banks to reach more pet parents in need. “They’re very grateful we have this a service to them,” says Sebes. “People come to us for help with their animals and it’s great we can provide for them.”

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.