City of Bloomington Animal Shelter needs “300 in 3 Weeks”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 15, 2012

For more information, please contact:
Laurie Ringquist, Director, City of Bloomington Animal Shelter, 349.3870


City of Bloomington Animal Shelter needs "300 in 3 Weeks"

Bloomington, Ind. - On Aug. 1 the City of Bloomington Animal Shelter kicked off its participation in the ASPCA Rachael Ray $100,000 Challenge, a three-month competition among 50 shelters nationwide to find homes for more cats and dogs than during the same period in 2011. A total of $500,000 will be given in various categories, with the grand prize of $100,000 going to the shelter that saves the most lives.

In order to be eligible for prize money the Shelter has to save a minimum of 300 more lives than during the same three months last year. In 2011, the Shelter saved 757 lives so must save at least 1,057 this year to be eligible. To date, the Shelter has saved 847 lives.

To meet that minimum the Shelter needs to place 300 more animals in good homes in the last three weeks of the Challenge. To do this, the Shelter is offering additional incentives to adopt:

• Free Feline Fridays will be extended to include Friday, Saturday and Sunday for each weekend remaining in October. All cat and kitten adoption fees will be waived on these days.
• Dog adoption fees have been reduced to $40 in October, with a further reduction to $20 on every Saturday in October.
• The Challenge will close with a "Howl-o-Ween" Adopt-a-Thon from Friday, Oct. 26 through Wednesday, Oct. 31. During that time, all feline adoption fees will be waived and all dog adoption fees will be $20. The Shelter will extend its hours until 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 31, the final day of the Challenge.

To help get the word out about this final push, the Shelter has created a new Twitter account [@adopttodaybtown|https://twitter.com/adopttodaybtown]. It will feature news and updates relevant to the last three weeks of the Challenge.

One of the awards available from the ASPCA is a $25,000 Community Engagement award, which is determined through voting. Voting will take place from Oct. 17 through 31 on the site [www.votetosavelives.org|www.votetosavelives.org]. The voting application will work through Facebook, so individuals must have a Facebook account to vote and will be able to vote only once per day. The top three vote recipients who have also saved the minimum of 300 more lives than last year will then be evaluated by an ASPCA panel to determine which shelter did the best at engaging its community in the Challenge.

For more information contact the Shelter at 349.3492, visit the Shelter's website at [www.bloomington.in.gov/animalshelter|www.bloomington.in.gov/animalshelter] or find the Shelter on Facebook at [www.facebook.com/COBAnimalshelter|www.facebook.com/COBAnimalshelter]. The Shelter is open to the public Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m., Tuesday and Friday from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.

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