July 2026 recap: what a quieter month looks like

Every month we publish a short, unglamorous recap of what came in, what went out, and anything operational worth flagging. July is historically the slowest month of the year for shelter donations across North America — people are travelling, budgets are stretched by summer expenses, and shelter intake is simultaneously at a yearly peak. Here is how the numbers landed for us.

Revenue in

Ad revenue was down roughly 18% versus June, which tracks with the seasonal dip Google reports across the "pets and animals" AdSense vertical for the summer months. Credit-pack revenue held steady, which we did not expect and are grateful for — the median purchase size did not change, but the number of purchasers ticked up slightly, mostly from repeat players.

Kibble out

We fulfilled two invoices this month, both from partner shelters we have worked with since spring. One was a routine monthly reorder of 400 pounds of adult maintenance kibble. The second was a smaller top-up order requested mid-month after an unusually large owner-surrender intake. Neither shelter was asked to change their existing supplier relationship — we simply paid the invoice their normal wholesaler sent them.

Operational notes

Nothing broke, which is worth saying out loud when it happens. The Stripe processing fees came in at their expected percentage, hosting and email were flat at US$47, and we ended the month with a reserve equal to about six weeks of median outflow — under our three-month cap.

What August looks like

We expect ad revenue to stay depressed through August and to recover in September when back-to-school traffic patterns kick in. We are not planning any product changes during this period. If you want to help specifically this summer, sharing the site with a friend who likes dogs is worth more per unit of effort than any other action, because ad revenue scales almost linearly with unique visitors.