November 7th, 2011

Editor’s Dispatch: Shelter Stories

by Brendan

For years now, Patrick McDonnell has been doing the Shelter Stories series in his MUTTS comics. In fact he’s been doing this the first week of every November since 1998 as part of National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week. He also runs the Shelter Stories every May during pet adoption week. There was a Shelter Stories book published back in 2008, collecting a bunch of past Shelter Stories series, along with real stories of people and their adopted pets. Yeah, Patrick is pretty dedicated to this.

If you’re a regular MUTTS reader, you may have noticed that last week he took a slightly different approach this year – instead of profiling a bunch of different pets for adoption, he told a little story about pet fostering. These are all from last week and you can go back in the DailyINK archives to read them, but I figured it would be fun to cluster them all into this post. Give it a read:

Being the cartoonist of a daily comic strip means filling a small rectangle of space with words and pictures that somehow connect with people. Most of the cartoonists we syndicate choose to go for a laugh when filling that space – Patrick McDonnell usually chooses to give people something to laugh about, too. But he also knows how to use the space very tastefully to share his passion for the welfare of animals. He’s never preachy and he’s certainly not a phony – these shelter stories are always genuine and moving. And I’m pretty sure they have inspired a LOT of adoptions, leading to happy pets and happy families.