Scratchings-and-Sniffings

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Save This Pup Posted: 30 Jun 2010 11:03 AM PDT While at BlogPaws East last April, I met the most amazing pet bloggers and pet parents. One of them is Laura Posey who created an idea that I have to share with you. In fact, I think it's such a great idea, I will be writing about it often. And, asking Laura to guest post. As we each come to terms with the issues around supporting shelters, overturning breed specific legislation, and finding ways to volunteer at local rescues, sometimes an idea of gigantic porportions pops up. This is one. IMHO Save This Pup - I hope you'll read, get behind this, and help out. Because this is one idea with paws... Me: How did you come up with idea, Laura? Laura: I was watching TV with a friend one night and saw and ad for one of those child sponsor organizations...like ChildFund International. I thought, "If those were dogs, I would sooooo give them money!" After a second, I wondered why there wasn't anyone doing that very same thing for dog. In that moment, Save This Pup was born. Within 10 minutes, my friends and I had picked a name and registered our domain. Then, right then and there, we started really creating Save This Pup. Me: Do you have a business plan? Condense it into one short paragraph, if you can. Laura: We have a wonderful business plan and it's pretty simple. Visitors to Save This Pup can search for a special homeless pup who needs money to stay alive until he finds his forever home. In exchange for a monthly donation of $25, the pup's sponsor will receive regular updates on their pup's situation including pictures. It's a way to provide funds to gets dogs the care they need and provide a connection between the dogs and their sponsors. We have advertising on the site that pays for the expenses of our organization so that we will be able to pass 100% of sponsorship money through to the rescue organization caring for your pup. Me: In a best case scenario, what do you hope will come of this idea? Laura: Our initial goal is to raise $10 million/year to help keep homeless dogs alive. We also want to launch sites for homeless cats, horses and birds once we get the dog site going. Ultimately, we want to make sure that no animal is euthanized just because of a lack of money to keep them alive. We currently euthanize over 3.5 million animals a year in this country and that is unacceptable in the world's richest nation. We know people want to help and this is a way for them to see exactly what their money is doing. Me: Where are you in the development right now? Laura: We are still putting together the funding for our site. It is a very complex site with lots of automation so we need about $50,000 to build and launch it. We will be applying for a Pepsi Refresh Grant in July and we also accept donations on our site. We are also working on our plan to get Save This Pup on the Ellen show. She is such a dog-lover, she could really help us get attention and find sponsors for the pups. If each of her daily viewers sponsored a pup, we could completely end euthanasia after just one show. You can check out our funny Ellen videos on our Save This Pup YouTube Channel. If anyone wants to make a fun video, we'd love to make you famous! Me: What do you need most: attention? cash? interest? Laura: We need money to launch and we need supporters to help us get our Pepsi grant. We have a potential investor and if we got a huge number of folks to respond to this post, we might be able to use it to persuade him to pull the trigger and fund the site launch. We'd love to grow our Facebook and Twitter fan bases to get investors' attention. <==== Click the links to Like "Save This Pet" and to Follow on Twitter. (we follow back!) We post some terrific stories on our sites as well as our newest "Get SaveThisPup on the Ellen Degeneres Show" videos. They are hilarious! (I've seen them and I agree! Hop over and watch them, then send them to Ellen! She's on Twitter @EllenDeGeneres) Me: How are you identifying shelters that would participate? Laura: We have a number of shelters who are anxious to participate. There are so, so many who really need help. We will be beta testing with a number of Richmond, VA area shelters to make sure everything is working properly and then we will be opening it up nationally. We'll be allowing any registered non-profit rescue organization (including those that do foster care) to put their dogs needing support on our site. The whole process will be automated so it will be really simple for the organizations to get their pups out there. Now, pet parents and pet people... are you ready to join this fantastic idea? Let's get those Facebook fans and Twitter fans up to 10,000!!!! W00t!

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