My dogs Sadie and Skippy are in the Community Sharing Pet Calendar again this year – they are the October pets, with the picture you see below. Obviously I enjoy “voicing” them, too.
The idea of a pet calendar is cute and I’m happy to help out by putting my dogs into it. The really great thing about this is that all of the funds raised by selling the calendar go to support the Community Sharing Pet Pantry. This Pet Pantry is the only one of its kind in Michigan and provides pet food for over 400 pets in the area that would otherwise have little to eat. There are lots of very good programs for providing food for needy families, but only this program (at least locally) for also providing food for the pets of those families.
The recent economic downturn was particularly hard on family pets. There were quite a few reported incidents of family moving out of foreclosed homes and leaving pets behind. As is should have been, most of the focus of news stories was about the hardships on the families and children when parents lost jobs and were forced to seek help. Very little was reported about the pets that those families had when hardship struck.
Many family pets ended up in shelters, abandoned by their owners. Both of my dogs were rescues during the Great Recession. You never get the background stories on them, so it’s hard to tell why they were given up, but both are such good dogs that it had to be painful for the families to part with them. At least it worked out well for the dogs and we got two great furry companions out of it all.
Community Sharing is a local non-profit charitable organization with the mission – To provide food, clothing, educational and emergency financial assistance to those in need while respecting their dignity and fostering their independence. Community sharing has a number of programs to make sure that energy is not shut off during the winter months, that people and their pets have food, that people have clothes to wear and that they get the traiign and advice that they need to become self-sufficient. To learn more about Community Sharing and how you can help with the program overall or the Pet Pantry in particular go to http://www.community-sharing.org/1/203/index.asp
Community Sharing is a 100% volunteer organization, so all of your donations go right into the deliverables for the program and not into administration or to pay fund-raisers. The calendars can be purchased at these Milford businesses: Veterinary Care Specialists, the Digital Document Store, Main Street Art, Huron Valley State Bank, Huron Valley Furniture, and Fitz Squared. Calendars are $10 apiece and make great Christmas stocking stuffers.
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