Have you heard? About July 23rd?!?

Today is Be the Change 4 Animals' quarterly "Blog the Change" event and this quarter the goal is to make bloggers (and blog readers) aware of the upcoming "Bloggers Unite for Dog Rescue" global event addressing the importance of dog adoption.

It took me a few reads to make sure I understood what's going on here today - I'm writing a post today to tell people they should join me in writing a post next week to talk about how important it is to adopt your next dog? Okay, I think I get it - takes me a few tries sometimes.

But actually, I do get it and here's why. Back in June when Pedigree Foundation was running its "Write a Post, Help a Dog campaign, I found out about it on the very last day of the campaign. A few of my readers mentioned they knew nothing about it either. So today, BtC4A is giving everyone a week's notice for the "Bloggers Unite" event by getting bloggers to tell other bloggers about next week's campaign. Very cool.

So here's the deal:

On July 23rd, BtC4A, in coordination with Dog Rescue Success and Blog Catalog, is hosting a global blogging event to promote dog adoption. "Bloggers Unite for Dog Rescue" invites everyone to spread the word about how important dog rescue and adoption is to the lives of so many animals.

And here's where YOU come in:

Have a blog? Awesome! Write a post about a rescue or shelter in your area or any dog rescue-related topic that interests you. You DON'T have to be a pet blogger to participate. In fact, that's the whole point: we want to get every blogger to write a post so everyone who reads blogs of all kinds will see these posts and learn why dog adoption is so very important.

If you don't have a blog, you can still participate by tweeting blog posts and sharing them on your Facebook walls. Stick posts on Pinterest, ♥ them on Tumblr, "Like it!" on StumbleUpon or the who knows how many other social media platforms available. (Don't use any of those social media tools? Got email? Share posts that way!)

The goal is to reach as many people as possible about the importance of dog adoption.

But just why is dog adoption so important?

Did you know:

• "Millions of dogs are euthanized" every year "because not enough people are adopting dogs through local rescue groups and shelters."
• Many people still buy dogs at pet stores (or worse - online!) even though most pet store dogs come from puppy mills.

We here in the pet-blogging and animal welfare community know most of this already but so many people outside our circle remain uninformed. And since pet stores often go out of their way to misrepresent the facts and confuse the consumer about where their puppies come from, even people who want to do the right thing may not realize the dog they are buying comes from a puppy mill.

It's our job, our responsibility, to get the facts out there so everyone knows. So pick a topic about dog rescue and join us next week to tell the world how to save a life by adopting their next dog.

Bella says "Thank you."

Thank you!