Halo Honors Iowa Retailer

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For a month in a New York City pop-up shop, Halo, Purely for Pets, encouraged others to “Do Good” for pets.

The month long event united pet lovers and provided easy ways for visitors to help pets in need, and engaged customers with the Halo brand and mission to give back to the community.

The final day of the Halo pop-up shop not only featured the ASPCA and Rescue Ink, but an award for a very special Halo retailer, who embodies the characteristics important to the company.

Jennifer Kluesner, the co-owner of Jett and Monkey’s Dog Shoppe in Des Moines, Iowa, has fostered and found adoption homes for more than 120 dogs in less than two years, funded entirely by herself.

She currently has 30 dogs at home she is caring for, and 1/3 of them are special needs dogs that have been rejected by all other options.  She feeds every dog in her house with Halo, all at her own expense.

Every dog that is adopted out is sent home with a bag of Halo and a bounce back coupon to come back to Jett and Monkey’s and buy their next bag of Halo there.

Halo flew Kluesner out to New York for the award, where she also had the opportunity to meet with various company leaders and see what they were doing with the pop-up shop.
“What I enjoy about Halo is how much support I actually receive for dogs I find homes for,” Kluesner said.

Earlier in the month, the grand opening of the pop-up shop featured a live radio broadcast from the store, followed by a VIP retailer event co-sponsored by Halo and Pet Age magazine the next night. Retailers were able to see firsthand what Halo was doing to not only give back to the pet community, but also drive traffic to their store.

Because the Halo Pet Foundation has no overhead costs, every dollar raised through the pop-up shop went directly to helping pets.

“Every dollar we collect here will go to the Halo pet foundation, every single dollar that comes in we send back out,” David Yaskulka, vice president of marketing and communications for HALO, said. “We are now donating more than 1.5 million meals of Halo’s Spot’s Stew every year thanks to people playing free kibble and we always do it in partnership with our retailers around the country.”

Joe Panz, the president of Rescue Ink., also attended the last day of the Halo pop-up shop. Rescue Ink does whatever is necessary within the means of the law to get an animal or a child out of a dangerous situation, as well as backs up other animal groups.

“When a rescue group gets into a situation that’s a little over their head or gets a little dangerous they call us in and we take care of business,” Panz said. “We are made up of street guys, police officers, military personnel, private investigators and lawyers.

“Ellen DeGeneres is a great person, she helps all the rescue groups, she helps us, she helps us out with food because we do run a shelter in Long Beach, N.Y. and we got hit and destroyed by Sandy. Ellen DeGeneres, the great person she is, she stepped up right away and sent food for the animals and really helped us out tremendously. Now she invited us here to help us raise some money to help fix the shelters.”