Charitable Gift Giving

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably noticed that stuffed animals aren’t as special to your child these days as they were to you when you were their age. When we were kids, our parents could maybe afford one or two stuffed animals that we’d cherish throughout our childhood.

But as manufacturing has gotten cheap, it seems that most kids have dozens or even hundreds of stuffed animals…bunnies, sheep, dogs, cats, fish, turtles, penguins, bears, elephants, unicorns, monkeys, pandas, foxes. Go to the zoo, the ballpark, the mall, a resort, and chances are yet another one is joining the menagerie. And don’t get me started with Disney.

After a while, you begin to notice that every stuffed animal is the same. So many of them are just rolled off a factory assembly line. At some point, your kid may have so many nondescript plush animals devoid of any uniqueness or personality that you wonder if they should be paying you rent.

Shelter Pets is a company that breaks the mold–literally. It’s a company with a unique idea–they learned the stories of real animals that were adopted from non-profit shelters and created unique stuffed animals based on them. For example, the little guy you see above is named Chunk the rat, who was donated from the Seattle Human shelter. You can read his story here.

Look through Shelter Pets’ Web site and you’ll see other pets and pet stories, from Ostera the bunny who survived a vicious dog attack, to Oakland the husky puppy with his one orange eye and one blue eye, to Rosie the Guinea Pig, rescued while she was pregnant.

For every Shelter Pet sold, 10% of sales are donated to non-profit animal shelters, including the shelter that the actual animal who inspired the stuffie came from. You can buy cheap stuffed animals of boring dogs and bears anywhere, but here’s where you can a unique one with an interesting story that you can use to teach your child about compassion, treating animals with care, and the important work that non-profit shelters do.