Pet food pantry overwhelmed with families in need

Pet food pantry overwhelmed with families in need

In greater lafayette, one animal activist group is focused on the pets.

Animal advocates of greater lafayette hosted its first pet food pantry this morning.

News 18's micah upshaw shows us how it's helping tackle food insecurity for both animals and humans.

Natsound: volunteer loading arms with pet food.

Nadine: we're trying to alleviate the financial stress.

Natsound: thank you for coming sir.

Nadine: a lot of people are unemployed right now, they may barely have enough money for their own food and the rent and the utilities, so if we can relieve some financial stress in people's budgets, that's a big goal.

Micah:nadine dolby is the president of animal advocates of greater lafayette.

She says food insecurity among pets can directly impact an owners diet as well.

Nadine: as research indicates, when people don't have foods for their pets, what happens is they give them the food that they were going to eat.

Micah: many pet owners would agree that their animals are just another member of the family.

Dolby doesn't want food insecurity to be a reason people let their pets go.

Nadine: that puts a huge strain on the system in the city of lafayette, particularly, that is already operating at capacity.

Micah: the group was expecting around 100 families to come to their first pet food pant.

Instead it brought out at least 200.

Volunteer: 25 minutes and this is the last bag of cat food.

Nadine: we had probably 40-50 pounds of cat food available, that tells us something about the need in the community.

Micah: dolby says animal advocates is the only group providing a pet food pantry in greater lafayette currently.

And it's only been able to work through pet-od donations from the community.

She's hoping they can continue.

Nadine: we are willing to do these drive-in pet food pantries as long as necessary through this crisis.

We need people to donate, we need people to help.

Micah: in greater lafayette, micah upshaw news 18.

The food pantry mainly serves cats and dogs.

Nadine dolby says with today's turn-out, they were not able to fully supply families with the food they needed.

If you'd like to help donate toward the next pantry, you can find that information on our website wlfi.com.

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