Chewy Claus Grants Holiday Wishes for Pets

Chewy Claus made tens of thousands of pets’ dreams come true this season—and now it’s time to return to the workshop to prepare to fulfill even more wishes in 2025. Watch this space for details on Chewy Claus’ return, and in the meantime, check out some of the incredible ways we’ve brought holiday magic to pets below.

“Faith came to us severely neglected,” says Michelle Walker, a Lucky Horse board member. When Faith arrived at the sanctuary in 2020, she was underweight and living with untreated Cushing’s Disease. Soon after her arrival, volunteers discovered she had melanoma all over her body.

Despite her age and her ailing health, Lucky Horse was determined to give her the best possible quality of life. She received stem cell treatments and surgeries, along with lots of loving care from owner and founder Dr. Blair Barone and her staff of volunteers.

“She got the royal treatment,” Dr. Barone says. “She has a new lease on life.”

Today, Faith is living her best life providing therapy and companionship to the sanctuary’s visitors. She’s a soothing presence for people struggling with PTSD or addiction issues, as well as children with developmental disorders.

“There’s just an aura Faith has,” says Susan Easby, a volunteer at Lucky Horse Sanctuary. “She is an extremely calming horse. It just gets inside you, inside your soul. That’s why I love being around her.”

Chewy Claus’ gift will help Faith and the other animals at Lucky Horse continue to serve their community. But the bigger gift, Dr. Barone says, is allowing the horses to continue to live out their purpose.

“People think senior horses are worthless. They don’t want them,” she explains. “But they’re just coming into themselves, and they offer so much in their connection with us.

“A horse has so much more to offer than just to ride them.”

Pets make their families smile, give them purpose, and help them through hard times. For Chewie, a 1.5-year-old Goldendoodle in Clifton, New Jersey, those responsibilities loom especially large—because his “family” is made up of 13,000 students.

As the sole therapy dog for the Clifton Public School District, Chewie (who is named after Chewbacca, the “Star Wars” character) supports students at all 19 schools in the district, from kindergarten to high school. It’s a big job—and he loves every minute of it, says acting superintendent and handler Mark Gengaro.

“Chewie has become a rock star here. We call him the Legend of Clifton,” Gengaro says. “He just loves being with the kids.”

But even an energetic and endlessly friendly pup like Chewie can’t provide all the support Clifton’s students need by himself. That’s why Chewy Claus delivered a very special gift to Clifton this year: a new Goldendoodle friend destined to join the district’s growing roster of therapy dogs.

“We affectionately named him Solo after Han Solo, being Chewbacca’s best friend in ‘Star Wars,’” Gengaro says.

Clifton’s therapy dog program began in 2023 in response to increasing rates of concerning behavior among students—anxiety, depression, “even self-harm,” Gengaro says.

It’s a unique opportunity for many of the students, who come from a diverse mix of backgrounds. One-third of Chewie’s students are disabled, and with 70 different languages spoken by students across the district, Cilfton is also the most linguistically diverse city in the country.

From easing elementary kids’ first-day jitters, to soothing an autistic child during a stressful episode, to helping teenagers navigate the anxiety of high school, Chewie has helped reduce negative behaviors at Clifton—and has become the most popular kid on campus.

“Last year, we went to a Clifton Mustang baseball game,” Gengaro recalls. “Instead of just chanting and cheering for the Mustangs, the student section started chanting in unison, ‘Chewie! Chewie!’”

Ultimately, Gengaro hopes to expand the therapy dog program so that each school has its own dedicated pup. But with therapy dog training costs as high as $15,000 per dog, the road ahead isn’t easy. Chewy’s donation, he says, will help the district make important progress with the program—helping a diverse community of students in the process.

“The generous donation of an additional therapy dog in Solo will allow us to service more students,” he says, “so that they can be successful, not just during their Clifton school years, but moving on to whatever trade schools, military services, colleges and universities, and beyond.”

Ten-year-old mixed-breed Norberta isn’t your average shelter dog. In 2020, she was living at an animal shelter in Las Vegas and suffering from an ulcer in her eye and a cranial crucial ligament (CCL) rupture in her knee, putting her at risk of euthanasia.

Luckily, she was taken in by Best Friends Animal Society, nursed back to health, and has been living at Best Friends’ shelter in Kanab, Utah, for the past four years.

Unlike so many other pets, Norberta was fortunate. Today, due to overcrowding across the country, a homeless pet is euthanized about every 90 seconds. Animal welfare organizations like Best Friends work with local shelters to take in as many animals as possible, but stories like Norberta’s are still the exception rather than the rule.

To help pets like Norberta, Chewy Claus teamed up with Best Friends to offer a weekend of free pet adoptions. The goal: Find loving families for as many pets as possible—and help shelters become no-kill, saving the lives of pets nationwide.

“Pets belong at home, not at shelters,” says Luis Quintanilla, senior director for animal care at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. “Bringing home an animal from a shelter not only saves the animal who’s being adopted, but also saves the next animal who is going to need that in-demand kennel space at your local shelter.”

“If just 6% more of the people who are already planning to bring a pet into their home would choose adoption,” says Best Friends cofounder Judah Battista, “every animal shelter in the country would be no-kill.”

“One of the biggest keys is removing barriers to adoption,” says Quintanilla. A weekend of free adoptions “is going to translate into more lives being saved,” he adds.

From November 29 through December 1, prospective pet parents can adopt from more than 100 Best Friends partner shelters across the country—at no cost. In addition to bringing home a new animal bestie, they’ll be part of a greater movement to support rescues like Best Friends and the pets in their care.

“Once you know something, you can’t not do something about it,” Battista says. “There are pets that need you in your community. Here’s a way you can help.”

Find a participating Best Friends partner shelter near you.

No pet or pet parent should go hungry. That’s why Chewy Claus partnered with Purina to donate thousands of pounds of food and treats for dogs and cats to Best Friends network partners across Southern Utah.

“More often than not, when there are people who are struggling a little bit, they will feed their pets before they feed themselves,” says Lynda Marpole, a representative of the pet food donation program Care & Share, one of many Best Friends partners who received these much-needed pet supplies to help pets and their parents across southern Utah and northern Arizona.

“The whole focus on my program is to help the people that need a little bit of extra help, so we can keep the pets and the families together,” Marpole says. “There are people whose whole emotional and mental well-being is dependent on their pet, so it’s a win/win situation” for both pets and their people.

Feeding at-risk pets also furthers Best Friends’ mission to make every shelter in the U.S. no-kill in 2025. By helping keep pets with their families, these donations keep animals out of shelters and rescues and relieve the strain on those organizations’ limited resources.

“Best Friends is feeling the love,” says Best Friends co-founder Judah Battista. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”