Iam's Gift Basket Giveaway And Interview With Mike Arms, Founder Of Iam's Home 4 The Holidays!

We're thrilled to bring you both a giveaway of a super-duper gift basket, courtesy of Iams, and to share with you excerpts from a recent conversation that Parental Unit had with Mike Arms, the president of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in San Diego. See details at the end of this post about what fun and useful items are in this basket and how to enter to win. Note: We've changed some of the entry requirements to make it even easier to enter!

Mr. Arms (I'll bet he wouldn't mind if we called him "Mike"), is a longtime advocate and tireless worker on behalf of orphaned animals. He's been the president of the Helen Woodward Animal Center since 1999 and is the creator of both the International Pet Adoptathon and Iams Home 4 the Holidays, now in its 14th year. The Home 4 the Holidays annual campaigns alone have placed more than 7 million pets into loving homes and donated an average of 200,000 tons of Iam's dog and cat food to its partner shelters in the last 13 years! Whew!

If you haven't read Mike's personal story, we encourage you to so so-it's the most inspiring call-to-action you could imagine. He is widely credited "with saving the lives of more orphaned animals than anyone else in the history of the planet," and we think this is, well, stupendous!

Although Parental Unit has had the pleasure of meeting Mike at two of the BlogPaws conferences, she was thrilled to chat with him a few weeks ago about this latest Home 4 the Holidays adoption campaign. Mike stressed that there are two particularly important issues for this year's campaign: The first is that little storm that blew across the East Coast, otherwise known as Hurricane Sandy. As we know, it wreaked havoc on millions of human and animal lives and put many shelters in that area "totally out of commission." So Mike asks us all to think about the huge overflow of pets from that area and what we can do to help these orphaned animals find both temporary shelters and forever loving homes.

And secondly, in addition to spreading the good word about pet adoption to your friends, neighbors, family (and even strangers!), he asks that if you cannot adopt a pet yourself this year, to please consider volunteering at your local shelter or rescue, donating needed items, or putting up the adoption fee for your favorite shelter pet.

The bottom line? This is the time of year that people are most likely to bring a new pet into their home, but unfortunately, so many folks still have the misconception that pets in shelters are somehow sick or "broken" or bad. The more that we take the initiative to educate our fellow pet lovers, the more likely these beautiful orphaned animals will be to find loving forever homes.

Now on to the Iams gift basket giveaway! Here are just some of the items one lucky winner will receive: An Iam's pet food voucher, a pet bed and leash, water bottle, bandanna, toy, and...a Swiffer Sweeper with both wet and dry cloths!

This giveaway will run from today,Thursday November 29 through Wednesday December 12 at 8:00 pm EST, so you and all of your friends will have plenty of time to enter. The one winner will be chosen by computerized random drawing and announced on the evening of December 12.

Here are the requirements to enter:  No anonymous comments, please!

1. Sign up for our e-mail blasts and newsletters-see very top of left sidebar for the sign-up form.

2. Tweet or put on your Facebook page this message about the giveaway: Enter to win an Iam's Pet Gift Basket here:www.boccibeefs.com/2012/11/iams-gift-basket-giveaway-and-interview.html @boccibeefs

  3. Comment on this post and indicate in your ONE comment that you'd like to enter this giveaway.

Note: if you choose to enter, please check back to see if you won-we're having a hard time getting some of your to respond!

                                                               Good Luck!

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