October is Adopt a Shelter Animal Month. Let’s keep spaying, neutering, and finding forever homes for all the dogs and cats with love to share.

Hey everyone, the response to our deep clearance has been great. Dogstuff (and catstuff) for pets and their people has been flying off our shelves, so we’ll have to finish up soon before it gets too empty in here.

The Dogstuff clearance will end Monday night (and then Jane is off to the market to find new Dogstuff). We’ve dropped prices even more for these last few days — up to a 75 percent reduction on some items, and almost all the rest of our 11,000 products are at least 20 percent off.

We’ll also discount newly arriving merchandise, right up to the last minute, so keep checking back for the latest deals. And even on a clearance sale, everything you buy online creates a donation to rescue through our Rescue First program.

And once you’ve ordered everything you want for the next little while, do us a favor and let your friends and family know about Dogstuff too. New customers will help us survive in these tough times — and enable us to give even more money to rescue, where the need is greatest. (Plus, until our new Gift Registry is up and running, cluing them in to Dogstuff could help you get the presents you want for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, your birthday … you get the idea.)

As always, thank you for your orders, your loyalty and your continued business as Dogstuff enters its 17th year.

Still doing your last-minute Christmas shopping? Not sure what to get a pet lover on your list? Share the joy with Dogstuff Gift Certificates.

Since they don’t expire, Dogstuff Gift Certificates are the perfect way to let recipients choose what they want from among our catalog of over 11,000 gifts in 150 breeds.

How about your favorite rescue? They can use a Dogstuff Gift Certificate to buy needed supplies, reward an outstanding volunteer, or raffle it off to raise funds.

Dogstuff Gift Certificates can go anywhere in the world via email, and can also be easily printed out from your computer to present in person. And, as with every other purchase you make at Dogstuff.com, a Dogstuff Gift Certificate creates a donation to rescue.

With a simple, automated process, no shipping charges, and instant delivery — even on Christmas Day! — Dogstuff Gift Certificates make the perfect gift. Just click here to send yours.

Thank you for being a Dogstuff customer, and may you and your pets have a wonderful holiday together.

Spinning keychains in most breeds

Good (and funny, and functional, and fanciful) things come in small packages. We have loads of Dogstuff that will make great stocking stuffers on Christmas Day. (We also have great dog and cat needlepoint stockings to stuff your Dogstuff into.)

Better yet, the Christmas shopping you do at Dogstuff.com can benefit your favorite rescue!

Part of Dogstuff’s commitment to rescue is that every sale — every single one — creates a donation to rescue, equivalent to five percent of your total order. If you don’t choose a rescue, the featured rescue of the moment gets the donation.

But you can choose one for yourself by going here:

http://www.dogstuff.com/rescue-directory/

… and picking a rescue you’d like to support. Click the “Support” button next to the rescue’s name and your subsequent purchase will benefit them.

Cute luggage tags

Breed socks

Bring a little joy to your favorite rescue this season. It’s easy, and it doesn’t cost you — or them — anything extra.

Dogs at risk are being rescued -- with your help

You already know that a portion of every online purchase at Dogstuff.com goes to support rescue. But we thought you’d like to know about a specific case of your rescue funds in action.

This weekend, K9 Northwest, a training and rescue facility in Tacoma, is on a marathon mission to rescue dogs from Camp Wolfgang, a rescue operation with 200 dogs (primarily German Shepherds, but other breeds as well) near Dallas, Texas.

Camp Wolfgang was forced to close by budget problems thanks to the struggling economy, and had to empty its facilities on short notice, leaving dozens of dogs at risk of euthanasia.

We’ve gotten word that the good folks at K9 Northwest reached Camp Wolfgang last night, and are on their way back to Tacoma with 27 dogs. We’re delighted to help sponsor this generous and compassionate effort with donations from the Special Rescue Fund at Dogstuff’s Rescue First program.

Thank you again for your support of rescue operations like this one.

There's a better way to get there (card from Dogstuff)

A little-known group of pilots donates their valuable time and skills to help animals find loving homes. Pilots N Paws flies animals from kill shelters around the country to places where willing adopters await. There’s video at the link.

Update: The Challenge is complete and 11th Hour Rescue did very well!

Thanks for your help.

We got this from our friends at 11th Hour Rescue who asked us to pass it along to all who might be interested in helping them build a kennel to aid in their mission of saving dogs from high-kill shelters. It looks like a great way to leverage a small donation into a chance for a big one and we’re always glad to help any rescue participating in our Rescue First program.

You can help us turn $10 into $50,0000 and give shelter dogs a second chance at life!

11th Hour Rescue is once again participating in a challenge being offered by Six Degrees, partnered with the Case Foundation and Parade on America’s Giving Challenge. The four US charity badges that have the most unique donors through the America’s Giving Challenge will receive $50,000 for their cause.

A unique donation is defined as one single donation per individual. This means that duplicate donations from the same individual to a single charity badge will only count once.

We are entered in this contest for our rescue and need the help of each and every one of you. The Challenge ends on January 31, 2008 at 3:00 pm eastern time so please hurry!

We focus on saving wonderful, highly adoptable dogs from kill shelters and we are a 501c3 organization. So many more lives can be saved with this money! Proceeds will also go towards funding our new kennel !!!

Donations are tax deductible and all we need is a $10 donation made thru our “charity badge” to have a chance at $50,000!
It is NOT the organization with the most money in donations that wins BUT THE ORGANIZATION THAT HAS THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF DONORS….. We are asking for your help to win this grant

The top four charities with the most number of donations will receive the matching grant.Thank you in advance for any help you can give us and our rescued dogs.

The Labs got some too, and the Weims and the Goldens as well as dozens of other breed rescues and a number who rescue every sort of breed and pet.

Thanks to our 40,000 customers worldwide, dozens of dog and pet rescue organizations across the country shared more than $8,000 this Christmas season through the Rescue First program at Dogstuff.com . The guiding principle of Rescue First was that every purchase at the Dogstuff website created a donation for rescue. Customers were free to choose from any of the more than 100 rescues listed, and if they didn’t have a favorite, we chose one to feature each day and receive their donation.

These images are a very small sample of the rescues who already have benefited from Rescue First. To see if your favorite rescue is on our support list, check out our Rescue First Directory. From all of us at Dogstuff, thanks for being our customers and thanks for helping us help rescue.

…for the new Small Rescues Fund – part of the Rescue First program at Dogstuff.com

The idea for the Small Rescues Fund came about while we were looking at literally hundreds of rescue websites across the country to find groups to invite to join the Rescue First program. Rescue First donates money to rescue organizations every time someone makes a purchase at the dogstuff.com website.

Our research turned up a lot of rescue groups that are active, well-organized and very businesslike in their operations. That’s great for the dogs who need their help – they have a lot of resources to bring to bear on the problems of abandoned and stray pets. You’ll find a number of them listed in our directory of Rescue First participants.

There are quite a few others, though, (often in rural areas) that give their hearts and hands and commitment to rescue but have few resources to draw upon in trying to help the animals that need them. Often they are tiny groups, with a handful of overworked volunteers, no corporate sponsors and minimal ability to promote their cause on the Internet or raise funds.

So we created the Small Rescues Fund to see if we can help a little, by collecting a portion of Dogstuff’s revenue to create a fund that gives small grants to small rescues in the hope of helping them pay the next vet/food/supplies bill that comes due.

We’re not kidding ourselves that we will have a huge impact but we plan to help where we can and, in the process, let small rescues know that we are grateful for what they do.

So whenever you see us featuring Miss Rosie’s smiling face while you are shopping at Dogstuff, you’re helping small rescues, too, with every purchase – and we are as grateful for that as they will be.

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…how to sign up their favorite rescue group for the Rescue First program at Dogstuff. (And well they might – Rescue First has produced over $3,500 in donations to rescue groups in just under three weeks of operation)

The easiest way is to go here:

http://www.dogstuff.com/rescue-directory/

and then cruise the directory to find the appropriate state (or regional or national) that applies to your rescue. Then (and this is important), click the appropriate breed (or “other” if we don’t have a rescue in the list yet serving your breed) and you’ll go to a page that lists the rescues already in the directory for that breed. At the bottom of this page, find and click the “Suggest a Rescue” link. You’ll see a form into which you can add basic information about the rescue you think we should add to the Rescue First program.

Let’s say you wanted to add the Shaggy Dog rescue in Missouri. You’d first choose “Missouri” from the list of states, and then choose “Other” because we don’t have a Shaggy Dog rescue group in MO yet. You will see a page that looks like this:

After clicking on the “Suggest a Rescue” link at the bottom of the window, you will see a simple form to fill out and submit that looks like this:

Click “Suggest Rescue” and you’re done. We’ll take it from there and in a few days your favorite rescue should appear on our list.

A very small sample of the rescues that are part of Rescue First program at Dogstuff.com

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That works out to an average of $100 each for the 22 rescue organizations who have gotten commissions from customer purchases since we began Rescue First.

Some rescues have gotten significantly more than the average, just by asking their supporters to use the link on their rescue website before shopping at Dogstuff. Having a link to Dogstuff also increases the rate at which they earn commissions – from three percent of all purchases made in their name to five percent.

We’re trying to spread the donations around, but we figure that those who participate most actively help make it possible for Rescue First to provide donations to all participants, so we recognize the active rescues with a higher commission.

Even rescue groups on our list who do nothing get benefits though – they earn three percent commissions from purchases on days we feature them. At least as we begin Rescue First, it’s our idea that dogs in need should get help even if the rescue that supports them is having a little trouble getting its act together or is not handy with its website or the Internet.

Our new Rescue First program at Dogstuff.com has been in operation for just over a week, now, and it already has created more than $1,100 in contributions to dog and pet rescues around the country.

Dogstuff always has helped raise money for rescue, but Rescue First is a way of making assistance to rescue a full-time part of our business.

The principle is simple – every purchase from dogstuff.com creates a contribution for rescue. Participating rescues receive a commission ranging from three percent to seven percent of each purchase, depending upon how actively they’ve chosen to participate.

Customers can pick a rescue to support from among our listed groups or suggest a favorite rescue to add to the list. If they don’t choose a rescue, a commission from their purchase goes to our featured rescue, a different one every day.

There is no extra cost to the customer, and none to the rescue organizations – the contribution comes right off the top of our revenue for each sale.

Rescue. First. Simple, yes?

So from now on, if you buy anything from the Dogstuff website, we can happily say to you, “Thank you for being our customer and for supporting rescue.”

(Current rescues, listed by their state, regional or national activity, are here and a full alphabetical listing is here)