dog is love
by kiko's aunties sandi and julie

You’ve probably seen the bright blue bumper sticker proclaiming DOG IS LOVE on trucks and cars roaming around Western North Carolina. If you are a dog person, most likely the corners of your mouth turned up, your heart warmed and expanded, and you breathed a deep sigh of appreciation and love—all from a few inches of paper stuck on the back of a car.

It all started one spring a few years ago when Suzi Katz (Kiko Katz’s person) pulled into the Earth Fare parking lot and found a young beagle mix wandering lost and looking for a home. She brought him home, named him Buddy, and started searching for his family. When that failed, she searched for a new family to love Buddy. It became clear to Suzi that local shelters were desperately overloaded, so she created a website called loveyourbuddy.com to help find him a home.

The Buddy story had a happy ending when she found him a safe, loving home, but the loveyourbuddystory was just beginning. The website that began as an effort to find one home for one dog blossomed and now offers 15 different regional resources for finding, caring for, and training animals, for pet sitting and more. Each week there are in-depth profiles of animals that need foster or permanent homes...including photos to melt your heart.

Along the way, Suzi got the idea for the DOG IS LOVE bumper stickers. She printed her first batch, thinking it would be fun to see them on cars around town. Later, she decided to use loveyourbuddy.com to sell the stickers and donate the proceeds to the Humane Alliance Spay-Neuter clinic and other animal welfare organizations. In this area they are sold primarily by Mary Hourihan at Asheville Pet Supply , the Trailhound Gear Shop, and Suzi’s pal singer/songwriter Christine Kane, who sells the stickers at her shows all over the US. There are DOG IS LOVE stickers in 29 states from California to Vermont.

100% of each sale goes towards donations. As of August 2004, $1462 has been donated to the Humane Alliance, an additional $300 to the Asheville Humane Society, $100 to Operation Greyhound, and proceeds have helped save other dog's lives. (Freya says THANKS!)

It’s amazing what one woman can accomplish...with a little help from her friends.