Meals on Wheels for Pets Too

Gold Country Community Services is excited to announce that homebound seniors enrolled in the Meals on Wheels program can now receive help for their four-legged friends through the Gold Country Pet Food Pantry.

Working in partnership with the Grass Valley Host Lions, Gold Country Community Services was able to secure a grant from The Banfield Charitable Trust Fund to help ensure that seniors and their pets stay together, where they belong.

Thanks to the generosity of The Banfield Charitable Trust, we are able to address an unmet need that was not overly obvious”, said Sandy Jacobson, GCCS Executive Director. “Then once the need became apparent, we honestly couldn’t figure out how to address it.”

But the pieces all came together when GCCS began working more closely with the Grass Valley Host Lions and Lion Krista Putnam. It was a natural fit for Krista who also volunteers for Sammie’s Friends Nevada County Animal Shelter. She initially stepped forward to write the grant but it’s become much more than that. Krista and the Lions now secure the needed supplies and pack up the pet food each week for Meals on Wheels volunteers deliver to local area seniors. The intent of the grant was to make sure that seniors who were in need of nutritional support were not sharing the meal meant form them with their pets.

The delivery of pet supplies to homebound seniors begin the first week in February and with a plan to make the program sustainable in the future from donated pet food. The goal is to make sure seniors in need of nutritional support aren’t tempted to share their meal by providing them with support for their pets. GCCS and the Lions also hope that this program will reduce the impact on local animal shelters from pets that could no longer be cared for.

For more information about the Gold County Pet Food Pantry, or to see how you might help, please contact Sandy “Jake” Jacobson at Gold Country Community Services at 273-4961 .