Original marketingmay lead shelter to big prize
Organizers of a XENIA — local animal shelter believe their initiatives to get animals adopted during the holiday season will earn it a large cash prize.
The Greene County Animal Care and Control Shelter entered theHelenWoodward Animal Center Home 4 the Holidays Rescue Center Contest in an effort to win $25,000.
The prize money will go to the shelter that did the most creative, innovative things to get their animals adopted during the holiday season. Shelters all over the country have entered the competition.
“It’s a pretty awesome, awesome, awesome thing that could go a longway for our spay-neuter program, for our adoption program,” said Julie Holmes-Taylor, the director of the Greene CountyAnimalCareandControl Center. “I hopewewin. I’m hopingwe did enough.”
Holmes-Taylor said she and her team created specialized videos, did virtual meet and greets and other activities to get pets out of the shelter and into homes. The shelter set up a “pet studio” where potential adopters could meet the pet and see how they play.
“We did a lot of hands-on meet the pet videos, where we talkedabout their personalities and stuff,” she said.
The local Girl Scout troop put together and decorated adoption bags with food, leashes, collars, toys and other supplies to get a pet started. The girl scouts also pickedananimalandwrote a letter to Santa fromits point of view. These letters were posted online, Holmes-Taylor said.
“Itwas the cutest thingwe haveeverdone,” Holmes-Taylor said. “They said stuff like ‘all I want for Christmas is a new home and to get out of here.’”
There was also an area business that stepped up and paid the adoption fees for a few animals.
Nearly a hundred pets were adopted from October to January, Holmes-Taylor said. That is fewer than were adopted this time last year, Holmes-Taylor said, but the shelter has seen far fewer animals in 2020 than in previous years.
Holmes-Taylor said in a normal year, there would be a bunch of people in and out of the shelter. They also wouldhavebeendoing adoption events at pet stores and Rural King, but the county shut those types of events
down, she said.
“We rely heavily on donations to care for the animals. None of this money would go back to the government,” Holmes-Taylor said. “Every penny counts for us. It is going directly to help animals.”
Holmes-Taylor said the average person can help the animal shelter by following them on Facebook and liking and sharing their posts. The Greene County Animal Care and Control Shelter also has an Amazon wish list from which people can send items to the shelter. Amazon shoppers also can choose Greene County Animal Care andControl as their charity on Amazon Smiles.