After 15 weeks and more than 4 million votes cast, our friends at The Animal Rescue Site have wrapped up their second $100,000 Shelter+ Challenge.

The grand prize of $20,000 went to Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, UT. Says Best Friends interim CEO Gregory Castle:

This is truly a wonderful gift for us
here at Best Friends. We are very grateful to our loyal supporters and to The Animal Rescue Site and Petfinder.com. This $20,000 prize will go far to benefit all the animals at the sanctuary as well as support our ongoing outreach to work towards a time when there are No More Homeless Pets.

Big black dogs. FIV+ cats. Senior pets. Special needs pets. To help these and other often-overlooked pets find homes, Petfinder has named August 12 Adopt-A-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day.

Visit our special section to download search widgets for senior and special-needs pets that you can post on your own Web site to help these pets find homes.

In preparation for Adopt-A-Less- Adoptable-Pet Day, we surveyed our shelter and rescue group members to find out which pets were the hardest to place. The results:

30% said senior/older pets
15% - pets with medical problems
13% - victims of breed prejudice
10% - shy pets
10% - those who need to be the only pet

But plenty of less-adoptable pets DO get adopted -- just check out our Happy Tails database for hundreds of examples (such
as Cow, the blind, deaf, hypothyroid and incontinent Dalmatian; Daisy Lou, the senior dog who is her adoptive mom's "baby girl"; and Cooper, the FIV+ cat).

Have you adopted a "less adoptable" pet? Tell us here!

Back in April, we surveyed Petfinder visitors about their experiences adopting, or trying to adopt, from shelters and rescue groups. A whopping 2,667 people responded -- and boy, did you have a lot to say (read more about the survey here).

Although 86% of respondents were "very" committed to adopting rather than buying a pet, many were discouraged by a lack of responsiveness from or other bad experience with an adoption group (40% said they had contacted an adoption group about a pet and received NO reply).

Now, Maddie's Fund is working with us to award $50,000 in prize money to Petfinder.com member shelters and rescue groups in the U.S. who demonstrate good customer service. The Put Your Best Face Forward program is designed to encourage shelters and rescues to assess their customer service and entice them to improve it if it is lacking.

Here's how it works, courtesy of Maddie's Fund:

From July 13 through September 18, there will be three ways to win cash awards!

Rescue groups--Check your in-box!
Each week, Petfinder.com will randomly e-mail three member rescue groups with questions about an available dog or cat posted on their website. If they get helpful information about that animal within 24 hours, the rescue group wins $500.

Shelters--Answer the Phone!
Each week, Petfinder.com will randomly call three shelters with questions about an available cat or dog posted on the website. If a live person answers the phone and provides helpful information about that animal (or connects the caller to someone who does), the shelter wins $500.

Be there live with a winning smile!
An "adopter" will randomly visit one selected shelter in a different state each week. If the "adopter" reports that the shelter experience was positive, pleasant and helpful, the shelter will win $2,000.

Read on for recent winners!

Just wanted to share the good news: The winner of our Adopt-a-Shelter-Cat Month cat room makeover contest is Central Minnesota Animal Care & Control!

The shelter will receive $1,300 worth of gorgeous cat furniture from The Refined Feline for their new colony-housing cat room.

The Refined Feline makes some of the best-looking and best-performing cat
furniture out there -- with removable carpet panels perfect for sheltering situations. 

You can see a photo of CMACC's "before" cat room above. This was their letter:

Central Minnesota Animal Care & Control, CMACC, heard about Petfinder.com's feline furniture giveaway. We would like you to consider our shelter.

We are sending you a current photo of the room that we will be making into a communal cat room, but we have no funding for cat furniture or any idea what type of furniture to place in the space.

We fell in love with the Refined Feline line of cat furniture and would love to have it as the main focal point of the room.

Please consider helping us outfit our cat room.

Lisa Tenter
Central Minnesota Animal Care & Control

Stay tuned for "after" pictures once CMACC's furniture has been delivered and set up!

For four days, Samantha the cat sat by the door through which her friend, Roosevelt, had departed with his new pet parent, and she cried.

The two domestic shorthairs had been nursed through an upper respiratory illness in the arms of their foster mom and had thoroughly bonded as they recovered. Now Roosevelt was gone.

Laurel Esken of Forest Hills, N.Y., had been looking for a companion for her Persian kitten, Sugar, who was overgrooming from lack of feline company, and saw Roosevelt listed on Petfinder by Posh Pets Rescue of New York City. She adopted him, but as it turned out, the now-recovered Roosevelt was too frisky for the placid Sugar, so Laurel checked back with Roosevelt's foster mom about adopting another cat.

Jill Abramson is writing a column in the New York Times called "The Puppy Diaries" about her new pet, which she bought from a reputable breeder.

Prior to her decision to buy, the column says, her son "bombarded me at work with impossibly cute photos from Petfinder.com" of pets who needed homes, but she chose to, as she called it, "be selfish" and buy a dog.

It's not quite clear why she made this choice, other than her husband fell in love with a Golden Retriever that friends had:

We discussed at length the relative merits of adoption versus a breeder.
If we adopted a dog from a shelter, as my sister has done twice, we would be taking the more virtuous, good-for-animals (and society) route. Saving a dog that needs a home or had been mistreated by a previous owner is an unselfish act. But we were leaning selfish. Henry wanted a bigger dog this time, and, when we took our beach walks, he looked longingly at the dogs who fetched and swam. He fell in love with a gentle English Standard golden retriever who belonged to friends, and had his heart set on a dog just like her. Our friends suggested a breeder.

She seems to have wrongly assumed she wouldn't be able to find a Golden on Petfinder, that somehow homeless dogs would be mutts. (Petfinder is host to a large number of Golden Retriever rescues.) I can't help but think what a better life lesson it would have been for her son if she had reinforced his altruism toward homeless pets. To my mind, parents should take every opportunity to pass along positive life lessons, and this seems to have been an opportunity missed.

A few months ago we posted several updates from Elizabeth Lujambio, founder of Marley's Pit Stop in Los Angeles, on Liza Bean, the shy pit bull she's fostering whose debilitating fearfulness was the subject of a phone consultation Elizabeth won with It's Me or the Dog star Victoria Stilwell.

Well, it turns out that Victoria, a true dog lover, went above and beyond the call of duty and paid a visit to Elizabeth and Liza Bean in person!

Here's Elizabeth's account (see all her posts here):

The movie studios in Los Angeles couldn't have staged a more perfect Manhattan Beach day: a slight ocean breeze, warm sunshine, a gorgeous dog and a beautiful British import!

Lucky Liza Bean finally got to meet her trainer extraordinaire, Victoria Stilwell, who took time away from her family on her only day off to give Marley's Pit Stop volunteer Dave and me even more tips on how to help Liza prepare for a new home.

Okay, so President Obama didn't adopt a dog from a shelter -- but that doesn't mean we don't think Bo the Portuguese water dog isn't a cutie! Check out Bo Obama: The First 100 Days on our sister site, AnimalPlanet.com, where you can read Bo's daily address, take a quiz to find out how well you know Bo, check out a gallery of Bo sightings at the White House and with his new family, and more!

Shortly after Colleen Vetter of Mahwah, N.J., adopted Abby Rose from Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge in New Jersey, Colleen's mother became terminally ill.

It hardly seemed an auspicious time to have a new member of the family. Life was hectic. Decisions had to be made by Colleen and her siblings, who spent many hours on the phone. Abby Rose stood by as a beacon of reassurance during the crisis.

"She was a huge comfort and mental health benefit during that time and every day since," Colleen says. "She lay with me while I cried and played with me to keep my mind busy."

Are you thinking about adopting a dog from a shelter or rescue group? Animal Planet's Underdog to Wonderdog is now casting adopters for its second season!

Here's the announcement we've been asked to share by the show's production company, Sharp Entertainment:

Sharp Entertainment is casting for the second season of the ambitious television series that pairs abandoned shelter dogs with loving and deserving families.

Guided by the expertise of our Wonder Team, these once-neglected and forgotten shelter dogs will be transformed and given a second chance at life by being placed in loving and caring homes.

Not only will the pooches undergo an amazing transformation - so will the families and their homes, with a special doggie makeover that ensures the home and family are ready to welcome their new canine member.