Does your dog love riding in the car? Of course he does. He’s a dog. Riding in a car is to dogs what riding in a spaceship is to us — except they get to stick their heads out the window.
Now you can put your dog’s affinity for car rides to good use. TrueCar and the Best Friends Animal Society have launched an Instagram campaign to support homeless dog shelters. Until the end of April, TrueCar will donate $1 for every dog-riding-in-car pic on Instagram, up to $50,000.
All you have to do is tag @TrueCar in a photo of your best friend cruising in a car, and include the hashtags #DogsInCars and #Donate. The money will go toward transporting dogs from overpopulated city shelters to nearby no-kill rescue facilities, where the pups are more likely to be adopted.
According to the Best Friends Animal Society, four million pets are killed in animal shelters every year. That’s roughly seven animals every minute. Dogs and cats end up in shelters after divorce, economic hardship, and other circumstances that are definitely not their fault.
Related: The Best Dog Gone Gift Guide
The Best Friends Animal Society and TrueCar have made it fun and exceptionally easy to make a difference. After you’ve snapped your photo and posted it to Instagram, you can help even more by adopting a pet from the Best Friends Animal Society or by donating to their cause. You can also volunteer at shelters, become a foster parent, or just continue to love your pets as much as humanly possible.
The more jaded among you might dismiss this as a marketing stunt for TrueCar. So what if it is? The world would be a much greater place if more marketing campaigns were like this. We recommend that you encourage this sort of behavior by taking a picture of your dog and posting it to Instagram. C’mon, it’s 2015 — you were probably going to that anyway.
TrueCar analyzes auto sale data to find out what people pay for specific vehicles. They also have a network of more than 10,000 TrueCar Certified Dealers that sell reasonably priced vehicles all over the country.
(photos courtesy of @sir_chubs_alot, @luda_the_frenchie, and @ellahudson)