This Month Only, Buy One Get One Free
- Vero Minute
- 23 hours ago
- 1 min read
The Humane Society shelter on 77th is nearly full. This is where the Bissell Pet Foundation's Empty the Shelters campaign comes in.
Kittens under 6 months were originally $70, with a second kitten at $35. That second fee has since been waived, so, no, it's not clickbait, it is indeed buy one get one free on kittens.
The rest of the pricing: puppies 6 months to a year, $70; dogs 1 to 8 years, $50; cats 7 months to 8 years, $35.
The program started in Michigan in 2016, backed by the Bissell Pet Foundation (yes, that Bissell, the vacuum company). Cathy Bissell, part of the family behind the brand, had adopted a six-year-old lab named Bear from a local shelter and watched him fit right into her family. She figured if more people saw shelter pets up close, adoption numbers would follow. So BPF started paying shelters directly to cut adoption fees for a couple of weeks at a time. Fitting, really, for a business model with a lot to gain from pet messes, but that's beside the point.
Ten years on, that's added up to nearly 400,000 pets placed across 909 shelters in 49 states and Canada. It runs quarterly, plus emergency rounds when a shelter hits crisis capacity, and it's now the largest funded adoption event in the country.
Here, the event runs July 5-26 at the shelter, 6230 77th Street, open 11 to 6 on weekdays and 11 to 5 on weekends.
Full list of who's waiting at hsvb.org.
