TYLER, Texas — It’s the season of giving, and a local nonprofit made a big donation to the Meals on Wheels Ministry pet food program to help many furry friends across the East Texas community.
Therapet: Animal Assisted Therapy donated 530 pounds of pet food to Meals on Wheels Ministry. In total, it was 424 pounds of dog food and 111 pounds of cat food. Elysia Reineck, the executive director of Therapet said they're always happy to help their community.
"As a 501C3 nonprofit we are fully donor supported. So we really love to come alongside other non profits in East Texas because we know the value of importance of donations whether it’s in kind or monetary," Reineck said.
If you have a pet, it’s probably safe to say you would do almost anything for them, including sharing your meal if they needed it. This donation goes straight to the ‘Meals on Wheels Fur program’ which helps pet owners served by the Meals on Wheels Ministry have food for themselves and their furry friends.
"It's a little known fact that eMals on Wheels has a pet program, but what we found through the years is that our meals on wheels clients who have a pet were more inclined to give their hungry pet their meals on wheels than to eat it themselves. So we had the idea that we should start providing dog and cat food to remedy that issue, so the human gets their nourishment and the pet receives theirs as well," said Miranda Asmussen, Meals on Wheels Marketing and Public Relations Director.
Since 2015, Therapet has donated pet food during the holiday season but this year’s may be one of the biggest yet. The donation's impact could be felt for multiple months.
"We have about 10% of our total number of clients have a dog or cat that’s on our meals fur pets program, and so we take these large bags of dog and cat food and we portion them out into gallon size ziplock baggies, so a donation of over 500 pounds should last us three or four months," Asmussen said.
But the giving doesn’t stop during the holidays. Anyone is welcome to donate pet food to the Meals on Wheels Ministry to help their pet program at any time.
"People can bring dog or cat food by here Monday through Friday, 8 to 3, every single week," Asmussend said. "We’ll accept it and put it to good use."
This is a big way to give back to pets who give us in return so much love.