Stray pets are not a problem to solve. They are neighbours to look after.
DDMOMMY started with one question at a kitchen table: if we ask people to spoil their
animals, what do we owe the ones nobody has? This page is our answer — the numbers, what we have
actually done, and what we still have to do better.
Two of them, waiting. Photographed for our storefront, not staged for this page.
200 millionstray dogs worldwide, WHO estimate
59,000people die of rabies every year
99%of those cases start with a dog bite
The scale of it
How many animals are actually out there
Every figure below comes from an organisation that publishes its methodology. We are not estimating,
and we are not rounding in a direction that flatters us.
The world
200M+stray dogs worldwide, by World Health Organization estimate
59,000human deaths from rabies every year, WHO
99%of human rabies cases come from a dog bite or scratch
40%of rabies victims are children under 15
The United States
5.8Mcats and dogs entered shelters and rescues in 2025 (2.8M dogs, 3M cats)
4.2Mwere adopted into homes in the same year
597,000were euthanised in shelters (320,000 dogs, 277,000 cats)
59%of intake arrived as strays; 30% were surrendered by owners
Sources: World Health Organization rabies fact sheet; ASPCA / Shelter Animals Count
2025 Annual Data Report. Once rabies reaches the nervous system the disease is fatal in effectively
100% of cases, which is why WHO's whole strategy is vaccinating dogs rather than treating people after
the fact. About 500,000 cats and dogs are waiting in shelters on any given day, per Best Friends Animal
Society's own dataset — a different counting method that arrives at the same direction of travel.
The arithmetic that matters
Intake is not exploding. Outflow is stuck.
This is the part almost every article gets wrong, so we checked it twice.
In 2025 dog intake actually fell by about 4% compared with 2024. Overall community intake of
dogs and cats was down 2.1%, roughly 121,000 fewer animals. Nothing about that suggests a sudden flood.
What has changed is how long animals wait. Intake stayed flat while length of stay grew, and a kennel
occupied for an extra month is a kennel unavailable to the next animal. Large dogs suffer most: they are
the hardest to place and the longest to hold. The national euthanasia rate has genuinely improved —
from 10% in 2019 to 8% in 2025 — but the gap between 5.8 million going in and 4.2 million coming
out is what fills the kennels.
Behind that sit two forces that have nothing to do with cruelty and everything to do with money.
Veterinary costs have risen more than 60% since 2014, and dog food prices are up about 45% since 2020.
In a January 2025 survey, 42% of pet owners said food prices had caused them significant difficulty and
39% said the same of veterinary bills. Housing is the quiet second: in one national shelter survey, 17%
of owner surrenders traced back to housing problems, well above the 10% tied directly to money.
Read that again. Most animals in American shelters did not arrive wild. They arrived because a person
could not keep them.
Myth 01
“Shelters are full because of stray dogs.”
59% of intake is genuinely unowned, so strays are the larger single share. But 30% are owner
surrenders, and that 30% is the part a household can actually change.
Myth 02
“The numbers keep getting worse.”
Both major US datasets show euthanasia counts falling. Best Friends recorded 396,000 dogs and cats
killed in 2025, the lowest cat total on record, with the national save rate at 82.5%. Real progress,
and not enough.
Myth 03
“Most shelter cats could be adopted.”
No. Community cats — animals who were never owned or are not socialised to people — make
up a large share of cats euthanised in the US each year, and most of them are not adoptable in the
ordinary sense.
What works
Fostering, and vaccinating.
Fostering frees a kennel immediately, which is the fastest way to create capacity without a
commitment. Mass vaccination of dogs is what ends rabies deaths; WHO notes that sterilising at least
75% of a cat colony within six months is the threshold at which the population begins to stabilise.
What we have done
Four things, stated plainly
We are a small brand. We would rather show you four real things than promise a tenth of a percent of
revenue that nobody can verify.
01
We donated to a stray animal rescue programme
In February 2023 we made a donation through the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green
Development Foundation. The certificate is below — certificate number M00LBMLTF. We publish it
because a claim without a document is just a slogan.
02
We backed it with our own advertising, not only money
Money buys food and medicine for a week. Our storefront and this page give the organisations we work
with something harder to get: visibility in front of people who already buy pet products and already
care.
03
We keep funding it, rather than announcing it once
A single donation is a photo opportunity. We treat this as an ongoing line in our budget so that a
rescue can count on it next quarter too. This page exists partly as a promise we can be held to.
04
We designed a product that serves the street, not only the living room
Our collapsible bins are built to be emptied, washed and stored — and because a flat-packed bin
is cheap to ship, we can donate units to small rescues without shipping cost eating the budget. Where a
rescue tells us what it actually needs, we would rather send product than a cheque.
Rescue organisations photograph every animal individually. This is what adoption actually
looks like.
The paperwork
Programme
Stray Animal Rescue Program
Certificate no.
M00LBMLTF
Issued
February 2023
Issued by
China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation
Certificate as issued. A closer crop of the certificate alone is also available
here.
Why we do this
We couldn’t look away. We hope you can’t either.
This is what a rescue really looks like up close — a mother curled around her puppies on a hard
floor, a dog watching the world through chain-link, hands lifting frightened animals down from a truck.
None of them chose this. Every one of them is still hoping someone will lean in and say,
“you’re safe now.”
Filmed on the ground at a rescue — real animals, no staging, no studio. We’re a
small brand and we can’t do this alone, so please stand with us: adopt, foster, volunteer, or give to a
shelter near you. And when you choose DDMOMMY, part of that goes back to rescue work through CBCGDF —
the same work that reaches animals like these. Together, let’s make sure fewer of them wait alone.
What you can do today
Four things that measurably help, ranked by effect
Ranked by what shelters say actually moves the needle, not by what sounds kindest.
01
Foster a dog or a cat
Opens a kennel the same day and creates capacity without a permanent commitment. The single fastest
lever available to an individual.
02
Adopt the long-stay animal
Large dogs and senior cats wait longest, and length of stay is what drives euthanasia rates. These
are the animals the system quietly fails.
03
Sterilise your own pet
An unplanned litter from an owned cat that goes outdoors feeds the same intake stream as any stray.
This is prevention you fully control.
04
Support keep-pets-in-homes programmes
Help owners afford vet care and pet-friendly housing. Because 30% of intake is surrender, resources
aimed there prevent an animal entering a shelter at all.
Two things worth knowing before you donate
Ask what percentage of your gift reaches the animals. The sector is full of organisations that would
rather you did not ask, which is itself informative.
And if you find a well-fed outdoor cat with a clipped ear tip, check before you call animal control.
That tip means a human has already sterilised, vaccinated and returned it to a managed colony — the
outcome ASPCA and Best Friends both recommend. Relocation and culling do not work; sustained
sterilisation within the colony does.
Our commitment
Part of what you buy here goes back here
Every DDMOMMY order supports stray animal rescue work, and we would rather you hold us to that than
take our word for it. If you run a rescue and need units rather than funds, write to us — we read
every message.
