Pets of the Homeless is the only national animal organization focused completely on feeding and providing emergency veterinary care to pets of the homeless.
Help Someone Care for Their Best Bud
Unconditional Love – Loyalty – Companionship – Protection
The economy is healing but the homeless situation is not. Once a person lands in homelessness it is a daily struggle to get out. With a pet it becomes more difficult. Can you help?
This week is the annual “Give a Dog a Bone Pet Food Drive” which was created by the organization Feeding Pets of the Homeless in 2008.
The group, located in Carson City, Nevada, was created to help feed pets of homeless and financially strapped families in their own home town. This eventually blossomed into an effort to promote giving and volunteering nationwide.
The group cites statistics that between 5 and 10% of homeless people have dogs and/or cats and depending on the city surveyed, this percentage can go as high as 24%. These statistics do not include families who are not homeless but may have fallen on hard times and want to be able to provide for their pets rather than turn them in to a shelter. They also do not cover the numbers of families that may be living with their pets in a domestic violence shelter.
If you would like to participate by donating to a pet food bank or assisting in other ways, the website has a locator you can use to find charities near where you live that run either run food banks with pet food, shelters for homeless pet owners and/or provide other support resources. There are also separate pages that list resources by state, national organizations, and Canadian and Australian resources. If you are interested in helping a particular breed, there is a resource section for that as well! You can also always contact your veterinarian, local shelter and local rescues to find out other ways you can help in your community. Source.
The national organization, Pets of the Homeless, asks the public to locate a collection site in their community by visiting http://www.petsofthehomeless.org. Donations of pet food should be taken to one of the identified, local collection sites.
Homelessness is on the rise and between 10-25% of homeless have pets in need of food. There are over 200 collection sites in over 33 states and 3 in Canada. Donations of pet food and supplies are received at member collection sites and distributed to food banks, soup kitchens and homeless shelters which then give the pet food and supplies to their clients.
For more information about Pets of the Homeless, visit http://www.petsofthehomeless.org
Or like them on Facebook . Find out how you can help.
