Doris Day
Foto: John Everton
postmarked in 1962? from Pakistan
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Doris Day's interest in animal welfare and related issues dates to her teen years. While recovering from an automobile accident, she took her dog Tiny for a walk without a leash. Tiny ran into the street and was killed by a passing car. Day later confessed guilt and loneliness about Tiny's untimely death. In 1971, she co-founded Actors and Others for Animals and appeared in a series of newspaper advertisements denouncing the wearing of fur, alongside Mary Tyler Moore, Angie Dickinson, and Jayne Meadows.
In 1978 Day founded her own Doris Day Pet Foundation, now the Doris Day Animal Foundation. A non-profit 501(c)(3) grant-giving public charity, DDAF funds other non-profit causes throughout the US that share DDAF's mission of helping animals and the people who love them. The Doris Day Animal Foundation continues to operate independently under Day's personal supervision.
To complement the Doris Day Animal Foundation, Day formed the Doris Day Animal League in 1987, a national non-profit citizen's lobbying organization whose mission is to reduce pain and suffering and protect animals through legislative initiatives. Day actively lobbied the United States Congress in support of legislation designed to safeguard animal welfare on a number of occasions and in 1995 originated the annual Spay Day USA. The Doris Day Animal League merged into The Humane Society of the United States in 2006. The Human Society now manages World Spay Day, the annual one-day spay/neuter event that Day originated
