SAN ANTONIO – With just a few plastic bags of pet food on its pet pantry shelves last week, Animal Care Services asked San Antonio for help with a public plea on Friday for donations.
By Monday, its “urgent” request for donations had been answered in the form of multiple Amazon packages with ACS’s preferred dog food brands, and supplies donated by its own staff members. Instead of just a few days, it now has about two or three weeks-worth of food.
“Any time that it involves resources for the community, we get a really good response,” said ACS Community Engagement Officer Paul Trujillo as he broke down the shipped boxes Monday.
ACS’s pet pantry isn’t in the department’s budget, Trujillo said; it’s made up entirely of donated items and can help people in emergency situation feed their pets when they just can’t cover the cost of food.
“If we can prevent a pet coming into the shelter and support the family for a week or two until they get back on their feet, that is definitely something that we’re wanting to do,” Trujillo said.
The pantry helps about 10 to 15 people per week, he said, and is also used for community and homeless outreach efforts.
The pantry was depleted after a particularly busy two-week period, Trujillo said. But he and ACS Community Relations Manager Liz Martinez say they’ve also generally been seeing fewer donations, but more need.
Martinez said they’ve been seeing the drop in donations especially during the summer. While they don’t know for sure why that is, Martinez said they suspect it’s a mixture of financial pressures like back-to-school shopping, higher power bills, and having kids at home instead of at school.
ACS recently began working with a nonprofit, Daisy Cares, which has helped bring in more pet food for the pantry. But that group, which collects donations and partners with the San Antonio Food Bank, says it’s also seeing less food coming in while also seeing more people needing their help.
At the San Antonio Food Bank, President and CEO Eric Cooper said most of the pet food it gets comes from pet food manufacturers and the retailers who sell it, rather than individual donations from residents.
They see “ups and downs” in the amount of donations, he said. But while he thinks “this year over last year might be down a little bit,” Cooper said it would take time to monitor as a trend.
There’s no doubt of the need, though.
“We need pet food,” Cooper said. “The supply doesn’t meet the demand. We could use more pet food to meet the demand.”
Martinez said ACS hopes with the help it gets from community partners like Daisy Cares it won’t need to put out calls for action like it did last week but that people also realize ACS is always open for donations.
“Anything helps,” she said.
ACS lists its preferred supplies on an Amazon wish list, and donations can be dropped off during regular business hours, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
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