Maddie's Pet Adoption Days success
What better way is there to start off the dog days of summer than with New York City’s biggest ever FREE adoption event? That’s right, you read correctly: FREE. Maddie’s Pet Adoption Days, a two-day event sponsored by Maddie’s Fund, the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals and the Petco Foundation, is helping to empty out New York City shelters and match up forever friends with their perfect pet parents.
The goal of Maddie’s Pet Adoption Days is to help give all shelter dogs and cats of all ages, healthy and those that may be in need of a little extra help, a second chance at finding a loving home. Over 30 rescue organizations participated in this event, located at Petco 92nd St. and Petco Union Square, with the goal of saving 1,000 lives. Maddie’s Fund made free adoptions possible by reimbursing these rescue organizations for every pet they adopted out. Make no mistake, however; all regular pre-qualification and pre-screenings for prospective pet parents were kept in place to ensure all animals went to good and caring homes.
The excitement began at Petco 92nd St. as GM Chris Brady kicked off the event uptown on June 1, with a street fair consisting of 34 adoption agencies in 10x10 tents, 5 adoption vans and 5 vendor tents. This street fair was on 92nd St. from Broadway to the West End and also on Broadway from 93rd St. to 91st St. in the parking lanes with 25,000 in attendance. GM Josh Axelband of Petco Union Square had the honor of adopting the first pet of the day, a Hurricane Sandy rescue bulldog from Long Island Bulldog Rescue. “I’ve been fostering Charlie for 5 months now and I just knew he was the perfect pet for my family and children,” said Josh about his new forever friend. “We adopted out 1,103 cats and dogs in just a single day, more than half of our two-day goal,” said Chris Brady. With this event Brady said "our store was able to achieve a 24% increase to our budget for the single day.”
The two-day extravaganza was wrapped up at Petco Union Square on June 2, with a second street fair consisting of 31 adoption agencies in 10x10 tents, 4 adoption vans, 7 cat agencies inside the store and 5 vendor tents. This street fair was on Broadway from 17th St. to 18th St. and wrapped the corners on 18th St. between 6th Ave. and Park Ave. South with over 40,000 in attendance. “We hit our goal out of the park! We adopted out 1,375 cats and dogs the second day of our event, reaching a total of 2,478 lives rescued in just two days! While we adopted 2,478 animals in the two days we still had over 200 pending applications that needed to be processed by the adoption agencies,” said Axelband. He then said, "because of this event our store was able to achieve a 12% increase in budget on Sunday.”
Adoptions weren’t the only free things at Maddie’s Pet Adoption Days. Natural Balance, Merrick, Blue Buffalo and Wellness were all in attendance making sure pet parents started their new forever friends off with a healthy diet of all-natural food. Ceva was offering new pet parents Comfort Zone discounts and had pools for the dogs to cool down in. Petco and Mayor’s Alliance volunteers worked tirelessly to ensure that our furry friends had some relief from the summer heat by providing ice packs for all of the rescue animals. Promoted by nonprofit Rock & Rawhide and the number-one radio show in the nation, Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, this event was so well-liked in New York City that both days the street fairs were covered on NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, NY-1 and in many other print stories in NYC and the metro area.
Not only did Maddie’s Fund, along with the Petco Foundation and Mayor Alliance, help save 2,478 lives in two days, but they also reimbursed all our city shelters and rescue organizations with over $2.4 million so that they can continue to keep animals out of shelters and in loving forever homes.