Thanks to a group of passionate soap fans, some animals in need received the gift of new beds. The gift became possible when fans of General Hospital star Julie Marie Berman (Lulu Spencer) raised money to purchase a gift for Berman's birthday. Knowing that Berman is an animal lover, those fans decided to use the money they raised to purchase pet beds from Better Buddies, a company founded by Berman and her husband, Mike Grady, and then donated those beds to the Best Friends Animal Society's animal sanctuary, which provides care for homeless animals.
"Because of these wonderful fans, we had the opportunity to hand-deliver our beloved beds to both dogs and cats at the sanctuary, and actually witness the animals' enthusiasm for new beds," Berman continued. "I get an overwhelming amount of joy helping animals, and this recent opportunity to see our hard work providing comfort for homeless animals will go on as one of the proudest moments of my life."
"The experience was unbelievable," Mike Grady added. "The people, animals and the serenity of the entire place makes you want to keep coming back. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to work with Best Friends both as an individual and through our business Better Buddies. This year we were fortunate to have received a nice donation of beds from a supportive group of fans of General Hospital. To see the happy faces of all the dogs and cats that rolled around on some new comfortable beds was a lot of fun. Some of these animals have come from such terrible conditions, so to be able to support them in any way we can is a blessing."
In a visit to Soap Central Live in October, Julie Berman talked about how she learned of the need for adopting homeless pets, and how that eventually led her to start a business with a message of social responsibility.
"[W]hen we were shopping for products for our own dogs, and we're buying these completely overpriced pieces of garbage for our dogs that get destroyed in two seconds, and we're paying a ton for things that just weren't good quality, let alone eco-friendly. And when the idea came, 'What if we did something? What if we started our own company -- what would we want the company to be' Berman continued. "And the two obvious things to us at the time were, one, to donate some of the profits to an animal rescue organization that specializes in rehabilitation and sheltering these animals, and two, to make it eco-friendly so that we're proud of the product that we're putting out in the environment, and we're hopefully changing the way business models work, where the environment is put first in all of our choices that we make for these products and how we conduct our business."