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Animals Find Loving Homes at Annual Retailer Event

For nearly a decade, Patti Christie, owner of Hood’s Do it Best in Wyandotte, Michigan, has been using her platform to help animals find their forever homes. She has always been an advocate for animals, and her friend Terra Muscat partnered with her to create an event the whole community stands behind: the Love Me Because Pet Adoption Event. In the past eight years, the annual event has raised over $110,000 and they found families for 74 hard-to-adopt animals.

“We wanted to help our local harder-to-adopt pets find homes,” Christie says. “These pets might be overweight or on special medication; they could be blind or missing a limb; or sometimes, they might just be overlooked based on the color of their fur.”

According to Christie, holding this event helps spread the word about animals in need and finds them a loving family, no matter what perceived barriers are there.

The weekend before the event, Hood’s Do it Best invited the community to visit the store and donate at the “smooch booth,” where they could meet and play with some furry friends and get excited for the adoption event the following weekend.

“The kids love to visit the smooch booth to see dogs and take pictures with them,” Christie says. “We also have organized a raffle people can enter to win one of the 120 baskets of goodies, a gourmet bake sale and a pet food bank to gather food for dogs and cats. All of this is done to help animals.”

For the Love Me Because Pet Adoption Event, held Feb. 10 at Hood’s Do it Best, there will be 50 animals, both cats and dogs up for adoption. The store will clear out the main aisles of product and replace it with the animals.

The event draws in about 500 people to the store each year, making it one of the busiest Saturdays in February at Hood’s Do it Best.

“The thing that means the most to me is seeing these animals that may not ever find a family get adopted,” Christie says.”I hope this year is even better and even more animals find their forever homes.”

About Renee Changnon

Renee Changnon is the retail outreach coordinator for NRHA. She meets with retailers in their stores and at industry events and introduces them to the services NRHA provides. Renee previously worked as a member of the NRHA communications team. She earned a degree in visual journalism from Illinois State University, where she served as the features editor for the school newspaper. After college, she implemented marketing and promotions initiatives at Jimmy John’s franchise locations across the country. She enjoys exploring books with her book club, Netflix marathons and hosting goat yoga at her apartment complex. Renee Changnon 317-275-9442 rchangnon@nrha.org

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