• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, August 30, 2022

While social media is responsible for lots of terrible news these days, Marketing Daily occasionally likes to point out its power. Thanks to Mattress Firm and some glam photography from the Dogist, nine good shelter dogs have new homes, complete with cushy beds of their own.

The retailer organized the dog-driven effort to promote last week’s annual National Dog Day. Working with the St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center, it selected nine worthy mutts. All are spayed or neutered, fully vaccinated and microchipped.

Then it brought in the Dogist, a well-known photographer and author who has turned his shots of some 30,000 dogs into a beefy social following. He created aww-dorable portraits of the lucky nine.

Posting the pictures on its Instagram page, the Mattress Firm also tossed in a bone for dog-loving mattress shoppers, offering a new dog bed to customers spending $1,000 or more on a new mattress. That drove both store traffic and adoption interest -- as did Mattress Firm’s offer to cover all adoption fees for the dogs.

A spokesperson for Mattress Firm, which gave each dog beds embroidered with their names, says all nine were adopted that day.

National Dog Day (August 26) has been around since 2004, connected to animal shelters to promote the well-being and adoption of rejected dogs. But it’s taken on new meaning since the pandemic when more than 23 million people adopted pets.

Yet many are still abandoned. On an annual basis, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates about 6.3 million companion animals wind up in shelters, about 3.1 million dogs and 3.2 million cats.

So technically, there is no shortage of adoptable dogs. But there are plenty of geographic imbalances. Many animal-welfare groups have sprung up to transport adoptable animals from states with a glut of cast-off pets, typically in the south, to those with higher demand.

St. Hubert’s, for example, has transported more than 20,000 pets through its WayStation relocation efforts.

And yes, there is a National Cat Day. Mark your calendars for Oct. 29.