By Liz Moser, Community Resource Coordinator

Over the past few months, you may have encountered empty pet food shelves at the grocery store or noticed back-ordered products when shopping for food online. Perhaps you’ve even faced the upsetting realization that your pet’s preferred food is out of stock.

Unfortunately, you’re not alone – the challenges of the pandemic have impacted pet food supplies, from production to delivery, making shortages an unfortunate fact of life. Our Chow Wagon Pet Food Bank has not been immune to these challenges. Over the past several months, our Chow Wagon team has received calls from many distressed clients concerned that the food they need to keep their pets healthy at home might not be available.

We know the importance of keeping pets’ bowls filled, so we have worked especially hard to adapt to these changes to ensure that we can continue to meet our clients’ needs. Through our relationships with local retailers and a very generous grant, we were recently able to purchase several pallets of cat food to ensure that all of our individual clients and food pantry partners receive their regular supplies during this challenging time. Generous in-kind donations from the public have also helped keep our shelves stocked. Despite national shortages, we have been able to utilize our available resources and have successfully distributed thousands of pounds of pet food to families in need.

We still primarily rely on in-kind support from the public to keep our Chow Wagon program operating at full capacity – your generosity is a crucial part of our mission to make sure that beloved pets always have full bowls. Please consider donating items from our wish lists or any other unopened pet food to support our pet retention efforts and help keep families together!