New Stamps Encourage Pet Adoption

A 50-year tradition continued this week with the dedication of the US Postal Service’s latest social awareness stamp: Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet. The sheet of stamps features photographs of five cats and five dogs from an animal shelter in New Milford.

“With the issuance of these stamps, the Postal Service is continuing its long, proud history of raising awareness of important social issues …one letter at a time,” said Mark Favale, Hawleyville postmaster. “Our goal is to increase public awareness of the problem and to promote humane and responsible pet care”

The Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet stamps were unveiled on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on March 17. The Postal Service has been working with Ms DeGeneres and Halo: Purely for Pets, a company she co-owns, to promote the stamps and to bring greater attention to the cause. Stamps to the Rescue is the name of the promotional campaign the Postal Service created to provide additional information about the stamps and information on the importance of pet adoption.

Every year, six to eight million cats and dogs enter animal shelters, and of that number, nearly half are euthanized. Although the problem seems overwhelming, the key to the solution is adopting a shelter pet when seeking a new companion animal and ensuring that the animal is spayed or neutered.

Cats and dogs have been featured on a few other US postage stamps. A 13-cent stamp of a kitten and puppy playing in the snow was issued in 1982 for use on Christmas season postcards. In 1998, images of a cat and a dog were included in the Bright Eyes set of five pets.

The animals featured on the Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet commemorative stamps are photographs of cats and dogs from a shelter in New Milford, taken by veteran stamp photographer Sally Andersen-Bruce. Derry Noyes was the designer and art director.