Daffy's Pet Soup Kitchen

Thanks to an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I learned about Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen.  It’s a pet food bank!  Serving North and Central Georgia, this is a wonderful organization that helps keep families and their pets together.  When people go through difficult financial times, as in the Great Recession, they sometimes must make the agonizing decision to give up their pets.  Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen supplies pet food to financially struggling people, allowing them to keep their beloved pets.  This also keeps pets out of shelters or from being abandoned on the streets, thereby decreasing the euthanasia rate in animal control facilities, lowering the tax burden on citizens whose tax dollars fund county-run animal control facilities, and giving other shelter animals more time to find their forever homes.

Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen is run entirely by volunteers.  Additionally, those helped by Daffy’s are required to perform community service in order to receive assistance.  Over 5,000 service hours are performed each month!  Daffy’s also advocates for pets by assisting with spays/neuters and posting lost pet notifications on Facebook.

I myself was severely affected by the Great Recession.  My husband Robert and I are both engineers and have our own company, Jordan Engineering.  We went from about 18 employees to two employees, and that didn’t include me.  I had to lay myself off at the beginning of 2009.  It took me nearly six months to find another job, and for the first three of those months, Robert didn’t have a paycheck, either.  It was a rough time, to say the least.  We were able to weather the storm thanks to savings and some help from family, but so many other people have faced much more difficult circumstances.  I can’t imagine things getting so bad that I would have to consider giving up my animals.  Therefore, my heart really goes out to those seeking assistance from Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen, and I am happy to support them.

It really bothers me when people think that helping animals somehow takes away from helping people in need.  We can and should care for both; it’s not a zero-sum game.  The beauty of Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen is that it helps both animals and people at the same time.  For more information or to make a donation to Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen, please visit http://daffyspetsoupkitchen.info/ or https://www.facebook.com/petsoupkitchen?fref=ts.