Today is Celebrate Shelter Pets Day on Facebook, a day dedicated to showing how rescue pets make great companions.

Our partners at the Shelter Pet Project and Maddie's Fund are calling on people like you to post about how a shelter pet has touched your life. Learn more about Celebrate Shelter Pets Day here.

In honor of the campaign, we've chosen a special Happy Tail about a former shelter dog who touches many lives in his new home. This story comes to us from Heidi Harden, shelter administrator at Paws for a Cause in New Brighton, MN:

This is Beau. He is a 10-year-old gorgeous blond Labrador who committed his life to one family. At the age of 10, his family decided they were too busy to take care of him anymore -- he had too much energy, demanded too much time.

Throughout December, we're giving you a great reason to sign up for the Petfinder newsletter: Each week, one new subscriber will win two awesome pet products from Animal Planet!

WEEK ONE: Subscribe between Dec. 1 and 5 for a chance to win a portable pet house and a pet fountain!
The Animal Planet Fold and Go Portable Pet House is made of soft foam that's lightweight yet durable, folds flat for travel or storage and includes a padded base for added comfort. At 18" x 18" x 17" H, it fits small and medium-sized dogs.
The Animal Planet Bubbling Pet Fountain is designed to prevent stagnant water and is ideal for cats and dogs of all sizes.
Read the official rules.

WEEK TWO: Subscribe between Dec. 6 and 12 for a chance to win a small pet bed and pet stairs!
The Animal Planet Small Round Pet Bed fits pets up to 25 lbs. It features a washable fleece cover that's warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Measures 23" in diameter x 6" H. Chose from multiple colors.
The Animal Planet Pet Ladder is lightweight and easily folds for storage. Measures 15" W x 19" H.
Read the official rules.

WEEK THREE: Subscribe between Dec. 13 and 19 for a chance to win a pet blanket and a zip-up travel pet bed!
The Animal Planet Pet Blanket is made of ultra-soft fleece. Use it at home on your pet's favorite sofa or chair; use it in the car or RV to keep pet hair off upholstery. Measures 6' x 6'.
The Animal Planet Zip Up Bed has a zipper so it's easy to open and close for convenient traveling. The bed measures 28" in diameter when fully opened.
Read the official rules.

WEEK FOUR: Subscribe between Dec. 20 and 26 for a chance to win a retractable leash with flashlight and a large pet bed!
The Animal Planet Retractable Pet Leash with Flashlight features a 16-foot retractable cord leash with a 4-foot nylon leader and mini cleanup-bag storage space built in. It also has a removable slide-top light for nighttime walks! The leash supports dogs up to 80 lbs.
The Animal Planet Large Pet Bed has a removable cover for easy cleaning. Measures 28" W x 34" L.
Read the official rules.

Even if you don't win, you can still purchase these and other great Animal Planet pet products. Best of all, each purchase benefits Animal Planet's R.O.A.R. (Reach Out. Act. Respond.) program, whose non-profit partners include the Petfinder.com Foundation. So you can buy a great gift for your pet, and help homeless pets at the same time!

Subscribe to the Petfinder newsletter now for your chance to win!

Welcome back -- we hope you had a great Thanksgiving! We at Petfinder were giving thanks for YOU, the wonderful people who care about pets and support pet adoption, and all the hard-working shelter and rescue-group staff and volunteers who give so much to help homeless pets.

Days 8 and 7 of the Twelve Days of Dewey offer easy, fun and incredibly effective ways you can help shelter pets find homes. Read on to learn more!

8) Photograph EIGHT shelter pets for their profiles on Petfinder. Photos are the first thing potential adopters notice about a pet on Petfinder, and can literally save a pet's life. Staff at crowded shelters often don't have time to take great photos of their adoptable pets, so this is one of the most important things volunteers can do to help -- not to mention one of the easiest and most fun! (Check out our tips on photographing shelter dogs and cats.)

When I adopted my dog Moby from a Denver, CO, shelter in 2006, I quickly knew that something was wrong with his health. The veterinarian diagnosed him with not only kennel cough but also canine influenza. Who knew dogs could get the flu? Had a vaccination been available for the shelter to administer, Moby would have come into his forever home as the strong dog he is today.

Now, the Petfinder.com Foundation and Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health, makers of the Nobivac® Canine Flu H3N8 vaccine, are making that healthy outlook possible for up to 1 MILLION shelter dogs with the Building Community Immunity grant.

Through this partnership, grants totaling up to one million free doses of Nobivac® Canine Flu H3N8 vaccine are being offered to Petfinder shelters and rescue groups to help protect homeless dogs against the very contagious canine flu. Grant recipients will receive up to a four-month, two-dose supply of canine influenza vaccine. (The vaccines will be sent to and must be administered by a licensed veterinarian.)

Our partners at the Shelter Pet Project and Maddie's Fund have designated Nov. 30 Celebrate Shelter Pets Day on Facebook and we hope you'll help!

Here's how the Shelter Pet Project describes it on their Facebook page:

Nov. 30 is "Celebrate Shelter Pets Day" on Facebook!
Don't you wish you could do something to help shelter pets find homes? Well, on Nov. 30, you can!

Every year, millions of people consider adopting shelter dogs or cats, but many don't follow through because they wrongly assume there's something wrong with shelter pets.

Those of us who share our lives with adopted and rescued pets know that's not true. We know that shelters and rescue groups are full of great pets - dogs with one ear up and one ear down, senior dogs content to cuddle on the sofa and watch TV with you, and frisky young kittens with a passionate interest in your computer keyboard.

Last week we introduced you to Dewey the library cat and the Twelve Days of Dewey, our campaign around the new children's book Dewey's Christmas at the Library. Today we're offering our suggestions for days 10 and 9.

Dewey's story and the way it inspired the people of Spencer, Iowa, is proof that, not only can people help pets, but pets can also help people and, in some cases, entire communities. The next two activities in the Twelve Days of Dewey have you engaging your community to help pets.

10) Organize a TEN-day food drive for your local animal shelter or rescue group at a business in your town such as a grocery or bookstore. You'll also be raising awareness about your local homeless pets and, by bringing people into the store, supporting your local economy.

9) Tell NINE people you know about the Twelve Days of Dewey and encourage them to participate. You can also download a Twelve Days of Dewey poster here.

At Petfinder, one of our goals is to elevate pets to the status of family members. And today we're teaming up with Petside.com for the Pet 'Net Family Event, in which we and 19 other blogs are writing about the special role pets play in our families (see links to all the Pet 'Net blog posts here). Here, we're sharing one of our favorite Happy Tails, in which one pet changes the life of a special boy -- and his whole family.

At Petfinder, we regularly get happy-ending stories that touch our hearts and show us how much pets make a difference in people's lives. One of these comes from Margo Eichholz of Grundy Center, Iowa.

"No smiles -- no jokes -- no happy laughter." That's how she describes the change she'd been seeing in her son's behavior. Eichholz's two sons are on the autism spectrum, and the oldest, Alex, was showing signs of depression. She worried about how she could help him. She wondered if getting him a dog of his own would help.

We at Petfinder are big believers in microchipping -- and a recent study of pets in shelters shows that microchipped dogs are twice as likely (and cats are twenty times more likely) to be returned home than those without chips.

But that same study showed that a microchip is far less effective when the owner's contact information is not up-to-date.

If you register your pet's chip with our
partner, HomeAgain, for $16.99 a year, not only will you be able to update your contact information as often as you need, at no charge, for the lifetime of your pet (even if you never renew your membership), you'll also benefit from HomeAgain's other services, including free access to the ASPCA's emergency medical hotline (which would otherwise cost $60 a call) and a nationwide pet-recovery network of more than 500,000 people on the lookout for lost pets (learn more).

Because we believe so strongly in microchipping and HomeAgain, we're going to share with you true stories from pet parents who've been reunited with lost pets thanks to HomeAgain.

'Home Again' in Less than 10 Minutes! - from Doris in Greenville, TX
I have always believed in the importance of microchipping, ID tags on collars and, of course, spaying/neutering. Tonight I became a 100% believer in and advocate for microchipping and keeping an up-to-date tag on our dog! Here is how HomeAgain saved our dog's life:

I took Sunny out through the fence gate when we left for our walk -- but we came back in through our back door. Anxious to start a movie, I opened the door to let Sunny outside to enjoy his chewy treat. I forgot that I had not closed the fence gate when we left for our outing.

With the holidays just around the corner, we've partnered with the publishers of the new children's book Dewey's Christmas at the Library to count down 12 easy ways to help homeless pets.

If you haven't heard of Dewey, he's the star of the bestselling book Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron, about an orange kitten abandoned in the book-return slot of the public library in Spencer, Iowa, on a freezing winter morning.

Myron, then the library director, found the kitten, named him Dewey Readmore Books and made him the mascot of the library, where he was beloved by staff and patrons for 19 years.

In Dewey's honor, Petfinder and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will be counting down the Twelve Days of Dewey each week until Christmas (see the full list and download a Twelve Days of Dewey poster here). Here are the first two:

12) Commit to donating to a shelter for TWELVE months. Help homeless pets year-round by making a promise to donate money or supplies to a shelter or rescue group once a month for an entire year. It doesn't have to be much -- every little bit helps pets in need. Find an animal shelter near you.

11) Tweet ELEVEN adoptable pets for Tweet a Pet Tuesday. Love Twitter? Use it to help pets! Just post a link to a pet's profile on Petfinder with the hashtag #TweetAPetTues. You could be responsible for helping a pet find his or her forever home! (Learn more about #TweetAPetTues.)

Since November is Adopt-A-Senior-Pet month, we're highlighting older pets, and Ponch is another example of an older pet who needed a home -- although for a cat, age 8 is not so senior. 

Nevertheless, his age weighed against his being adopted. He had been at the shelter for six months. He had lost his former home when his elderly pet parents went to live in a nursing home.

Their daughter consigned Ponch, then called Honcho, to the outdoors.  A neighbor felt sorry for him and took him to the Baltimore Humane Society, where staff posted him on Petfinder.

But Joelyne King of Laurel, Md., didn't practice age discrimination. "The moment I saw his face, I knew he was the one," she says. "There was just something very special about him. My husband fell in love with him, too."