An actress and a longtime supporter of Best Friends, Autumn Reeser is drumming up support for Best Friends this holiday season and urging her friends and fans to pitch in for the animals.
“If you’re still looking for holiday gifts, a great one is to sponsor a pet at Best Friends Animal Society!” she writes in a blog that she’s posted on her website and on her MySpace page. “For around $25, you (or a friend) can be an ‘angel’ to an animal in need. Last year I sponsored a beautiful golden retriever named Brooke as a gift to my little sister.”
Reeser is best known for her role in the Fox series “The O.C.” and for her current role in HBO’s “Entourage.” She became a member of Best Friends around five years ago after meeting Best Friends co-founder Silva Battista at the launch of “Zissou and Spike,” a producer of a collection of high-end T-shirts that donates a portion of its revenue to Best Friends. At the time, Reeser was looking for an animal welfare organization she could lend her support to. After meeting Battista and doing her research, she decided to throw her support behind Best Friends.
“When I was a child I dreamed of opening a sanctuary for animals on a huge piece of land,” she says. “And that’s exactly what Best Friends did.”
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Autumn at the Lint Roller party |
Two years ago, Reeser was in northern Utah working on a film. During a break in shooting, she drove five hours to see our sanctuary and volunteer with the animals.
“I corralled about eight people to come with me, and everyone had a great time,” she remembers.
“The love and care [Best Friends] gives to these animals is inspiring,” she would later write in one of her blogs.
While growing up in Oceanside, Calif., in the midst of many homeless animals, Reeser learned first-hand the problem that Best Friends is trying to fix. Reeser lived near a military base, and she says that many people at the base, when reassigned by the military, would simply dump their pets on the roadside rather than take them along to their new locations.
“Animals can be so easily overlooked,” she says. “If people aren’t trained to have empathy, they treat animals like they’re not living beings and discard them.”
Having had the experience with homeless pets in her childhood, Reeser naturally gravitated to Best Friends, whose mission it is to bring about a time of No More Homeless Pets.
Ever since becoming a Best Friends member, Reeser has attended the Lint Roller Party yearly. She has also heavily promoted the party, an annual fundraiser for Best Friends’ L.A. Programs. Moreover, she volunteers yearly at the Best Friends annual Pet Adoption Festival in Los Angeles.
Reeser says that the reaction to her blog has been “great,” and that many are following her lead.
“A lot of people I know are looking for an organization like Best Friends to contribute to,” she says.
Reeser has given her friends and fans an added bit of incentive for sponsoring an animal.
As she writes in her blog: “If you do decide to sponsor an animal, let me know his/her name, and I’ll send them their own box of treats and toys to say ‘Thank You’ to you for helping out such an incredible organization!!!”
Click here to see the animals you can sponsor on behalf of a friend or family member.
Written by Best Friends staff
Photos by Best Friends staff
As part of Best Friends’ 25th anniversary in 2009, our goal is to double our membership, so we can double our efforts to bring about a time when all companion animals have a forever home. What can you do to help? Give the Gift of a Best Friends membership to family and friends.
