MY MUTT PROGRAM
After seventeen successful years, we have retired the Pet Food Express My Mutt program. We have loved sharing this unique program with our customers and with the rescue community.
The My Mutt program was originally designed by our co-owner Mark Witriol with input from a local shelter director, as a way to celebrate the “everydog” while raising money for local rescues and shelters. In its tenure, the program has produced over 5,000 posters and generated more than $4 Million to animal-centric non-profits. And perhaps most importantly, it has made our customers’ pets – from dogs and cats to pigeons, chickens, horses, llamas, and even a skateboarding tortoise – one of the primary focal points of our stores.
We are no longer taking new My Mutt applications. If you have questions about your open application, please email us directly for assistance.
Thank you for helping us make the My Mutt program so successful for all these years. We are immensely proud of what has been accomplished in its time, and we look forward to the new opportunities ahead to partner with our rescue and shelter partners and our generous, caring customers.
FAQ
I have always wanted a My Mutt poster, but haven’t applied yet. Can I still get one?
We are no longer taking new applications for My Mutt posters. If you have questions about a special circumstance, please email us at mymutt@petfoodexpress.com for more assistance.
I applied already but haven’t heard back from anyone, haven’t had my photoshoot yet, or my poster hasn’t been installed yet. What will happen to my application?
All valid applications already submitted will be fully honored; you will still get to have a professional photoshoot with one of our contract photographers, and will see your pet’s poster in the Pet Food Express store of your choice for the entire guaranteed time (6-mos or a year) according to your donation amount.
If you applied online, you should be good to go, but if you want to double-check you can email us at mymutt@petfoodexpress.com. If you applied any other way than through our online portal located at petfood.express/mymutt-form, such as by mail or through the charitable organization you made the donation to, please email us immediately to check on your application.
I have a My Mutt poster up in a Pet Food Express store already, what will happen to it?
The first step of retiring the My Mutt program is to stop taking new applications, but at this time we are not planning to remove the posters that are already up in our stores. Many of those posters are still under installation guarantees, and we have no intention of removing them before those guarantees have expired. Even for posters whose guarantees have expired, we expect them to stay up in the store through at least the rest of 2020.
If you currently have a poster in one of our stores, you should have received an email from us checking in. If you did not, or if your contact info has changed since your poster was installed, it would be a good idea to email us at mymutt@petfoodexpress.com to update your info. Otherwise, your poster will stay up for now, and we will give you plenty of notice when we do expect it to be uninstalled – so that you can take it home!
I would like to have my poster now. Can I have it?
Of course! Our My Mutt customers are always welcome to claim their posters at any time, even before your guarantee window expires. Please send us an email at mymutt@petfoodexpress.com with your name, the name of your pet(s) in the poster, and the store location that your poster is in, so that we can start the process. Please note that for safety reasons our store employees are not allowed to uninstall My Mutt posters themselves, so we will need a little time to send a technician out to the store to take care of your request.
I usually renew my donations each year in order to keep my My Mutt poster installed in the store, can I still renew and keep my poster up longer?
We are no longer accepting renewals on existing posters. Since we are no longer accepting new applications for posters to be installed, it is likely, though not guaranteed, that your poster will remain up in-store until the time comes to uninstall all posters in that store. We expect this to be no earlier than December 31 2021, although we do not yet have a firm date for when it will be and it may be later than that.
When you do take all the posters down, what will happen to them?
Anytime a My Mutt poster comes down, we make every effort to contact the owners and send it home with them. We consider all of the My Mutt posters to be the property of the owners, and we try to take the best possible care of them during their lifecycle as a result.
In some cases, the customer doesn’t have the room to display or store the poster, but will offer it to the rescue or shelter that they donated to or adopted from, for display at their facility. In these cases, we try to be as helpful as possible with contacting the rescue and transporting the poster.
Some of the posters in our stores have been up for a very long time, and are faded, stained, or damaged as a result of normal wear-and-tear. If that is the case, we will offer each customer the option of claiming their original poster as-is or having a clean, new reprint made.
If a customer does not want the poster at all, or we cannot get a hold of them despite our best efforts, we bring the posters back to our warehouse in Oakland. We store posters for a reasonable amount of time in case the customer contacts us, and after that time is up we work with our printing company to safely and responsibly recycle any unclaimed posters.
I have a My Mutt prize or gift certificate that I just found or that I have been holding on to, can I still redeem that for a poster?
We apologize, but following a grace period after our initial announcement, we have ceased taking any additional new applications. If you have questions about a special circumstance, please email us at mymutt@petfoodexpress.com for more assistance.
Contact Us
For assistance with your My Mutt application, to check on the status of your new application or ongoing poster, or for questions about a My Mutt poster already in a Pet Food Express store, please email us directly at mymutt@petfoodexpress.com.
Please note that we have received an enormous amount of emails since the program’s retirement, and we are working through them as quickly as we can. If you do not hear from us in 3-5 business days, please re-send your email to be certain that we got it, or call our office at (510) 924-3365.
