Week 21 - Rescued Critters Food Drive

Hi Folks,

Highly Motivating Results

This past Sunday was so pleasant, many folks went out to play. And believe it or not, they forgot to leave their donation on the porch.

As soon as I finished my rounds, I tallied everything. Not bad but I always want to do better.

After dinner tonight, I updated the quarterly report and “not bad” turned into holly cow. We’ve accomplished 53% of our goal and we are still 5 weeks away from our half way point or 26 weeks. That means we are doing extremely well and we are taking it easy, too. So, I’m going to follow your lead and just smile and go with the flow.

Haley gets it, too.

When taking the donation photo Sunday, Haley just relaxed, not sniffing one cat food can. I thought it a bit unusual but her calm helped me set up and shoot quickly. Now I get that she gets we’re doing just great.

This week we donated 14.6 lbs. of pet food, a lead, some treats and a harness from the Pug Store. The cash amounted to $41.05.

See you Sunday,

Peter

Week 20 - Rescued Critters Food Drive

Hi Folks,

Just Need One Rebecca Lipson

Rebecca Lipson at the Miles School displaying the silver
plate the Community Food Bank presented to all us One
Can A Week folks for collecting so much food.

After some local and national publicity in the early days of One Can A Week, Rebecca Lipson, a teacher at the Miles School contacted me. She wanted to get all the students involved in donating food and some money to the food bank.

Rebecca’s program grew quickly and over a 6- year-period, Miles donated tons and tons of food. I know because I delivered every pound to the food bank.

Although Rebecca moved on to the U of A after a couple of years, her fellow teachers stepped up and kept the program going. Her energy and her spirit just lived on at Miles.

After some local and national publicity in the early days of One Can A Week, Rebecca Lipson, a teacher at the Miles School contacted me. She wanted to get all the students involved in donating food and some money to the food bank.

Rebecca’s program grew quickly and over a 6- year-period, Miles donated tons and tons of food. I know because I delivered every pound to the food bank.

Although Rebecca moved on to the U of A after a couple of years, her fellow teachers stepped up and kept the program going. Her energy and her spirit just lived on at Miles.

Rebecca jumped into my thoughts lately because I have a new idea involving kids, schools and community service. I’ve been asking folks if they could help me get an introduction to a teacher or two and I even went back to Miles to set up a meeting but they were too busy to call me back.

Okay, so here’s the idea in a nutshell.

One cent for one minute of community service.

Okay, so it’s a really big nutshell.

Below you are going to find all the details about the concept but for right now, I would like to mention a few things that will help you eliminate some societal issues.

1. We monetize the high school diploma and the college degree, why not community service.
2. Nearly all top corporate executives perform community service by writing checks, mostly. These folks are held in high esteem for doing so.
3. Corporations, nonprofits and universities require community service involvement on their applications.
4. Most community service is not verifiable.
5. Few community service programs encourage kids to think about community service every week. One Can A Week did and now Rescued Critters Food Drive will.
6.  Community service makes better kids, teens, adults, seniors and businesses.
7. We are in the age of parity so treating everyone equally—e.g., kids and executives—is required.

While keeping all this in mind, here is the One Cent for One Minute of Community Service process.

Kids donate some change weekly in school and they earn one minute of community service for each penny gifted. The teacher keeps a record of each donation and then issues a community service certificate every quarter or semester for each participating student. Then all the money is donated to PACC each week.

At the same time, corporations, universities and nonprofits associated with PACC begin to publicize their interest in the Rescued Critters Food Drive certificate. This step monetizes the community service which motivates the kids to donate consistently, year after year. Their future job searches will be made easier because they will have sought-after and verifiable community service credentials.

Please review the materials below and if someone comes to mind whom you think might be interested, please forward this email to him or her. Then let’s see what happens. 

Saving Puppies and Kittens and Trees, too

This envelope stuck in my neighbor Kim's door confused me at first.
How am I going to help her save trees if I leave her a Thank You Card?
She is saving trees, I'm killing hem. Then it hit me. I can use the same
envelope to thank her ... and I did.

Too many new things for Haley

Confronted with empty pill bottles and a lead without a hook, Haley wasn’t sure what to do. So, she switched off her personality.

This week we donated 9.2 lbs. of pet food and $56.79 in cash. Many folks weren’t home this Sunday but we still collected a lot for PACC.

See you Sunday,

Peter

19th Week - Rescued Critters Food Drive

Hi Folks,

Thanks to KGUN 9 News for the Coverage

Today, John, the videographer from KGUN 9 News met me in the PACC parking lot at noon to film our food and cash donation. We talked for a minute or two and then moved on to actually making the delivery. Then he told me the news story would be on the 6 pm newscast. I thanked him warmly for his time and the opportunity to tell our story. What I didn’t realize was how quick the segment would be. Anyway, at least Rescued Critters Food Drive still has 14.5 minutes of fame to go.

Second Rescued Critters Truck Load

Since the truck and the food were in the alley, so was Peach, the not so feral tom cat. He is most aggressive when it comes to food, always being first in line no matter how many of his feline friends he has to push out of the way. Peach likes it best when it’s just food and solitude.

As we learned last week, PACC has two approaches to feeding pets. For those who need assistance with feeding their pets, PACC provides less expensive commercial brands like Purina Dog Chow. The idea here is to keep the pets with their owners instead of having them give their dog or cat up because they simply can’t afford to feed them anymore. Pets remaining in their homes is the goal here. Also, home based pets seem to eat without much coaxing.

Rescued pets get the more expensive foods because they are stressed out and have a tendency to not eat well. So nutrient packed foods are provided to shelter pets. That’s where the $0.90 cents per pound comes in and why they need donations to feed the 17,000 plus a year shelter pets.

PACC’s food assistance program provides about 6,000 lbs. a year to help folks keep their pets in their homes. As I said, this solution is so much better than turning over a loved family pet to the shelter. That’s why, when I saw the Purina food on sale for about $0.48 cents per pound, I scooped up six 52 lb. bags in the past two weeks. As the year progresses, maybe we can be responsible for supplying PACC’s food assistance program. I like providing targeted support to PACC and I am sure you do, too.

This week we donated, a blanket, a retractable lead and a regular lead, in addition to 121.4 pounds of dog and cat food.  The cash donation amounted to $36.15

See you Sunday,

Peter

Week 18 - Rescued Critters Food Drive

Hi Folks,

First Rescued Critters Truck Load

While shopping in Walmart last Thursday I noticed they were selling monster (52 lbs.) bags of Purina Dog Chow for $22.98. That’s $0.44 cents per pound. Immediately I thought of all those tons of very inexpensive and high-quality potatoes I bought for the Community Food Bank with One Can A Week donations. Often the CFB had to send a duce and a half (used to drive one of those things in the Army) to pick up three or four pallets from El Super.

I sent off an email to Bennett at PACC asking what their pet food requirements were and waited. (Walmart and many supermarket brands are corn based). Sunday after collecting our donations I ran a quick tally and got $97.04. Wow, that was enough to buy three 52 lb. bags. Couldn’t hold back so I drive to the Broadway Walmart and was stunned. All of the Purina bags were gone.

I had two choices, Walmart way up on Speedway or the one in the Marketplace Mall on Kino. My gut said Speedway and off I drove. The pet department is way in the back of the store. As I got near, I could see a massive pallet brimming with large green bags. Perfect.

Bennett’s Quiet Intellect

Late Sunday afternoon Bennett replied to my email.

“We wouldn’t feed these (Purina Dog Chow and Pedigree Steak and Vegetable) in shelter because dogs need to eat more of it to get their nutritional needs for the day and so many of our dogs won’t eat enough already, but we would definitely use it for dogs we’re encountering while doing outreach. They tend to eat a little more and their owners tend to be on top of making sure they aren’t losing weight.”

Fascinating. I read his paragraph a couple of times to understand their feeding concept. It makes perfect sense but what I had thought about most rescues organizations was, they feed what they have. Not true for PACC.

This is a photo of Haley in her former home where her hair
is thin and she was not given the best of care.

 They do what I do. Find the best food possible for animals in distress. To digress a bit, when I first got Haley, she was having all kinds of problems: Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), itchy ears, head shaking, blood-shot eyes. All the symptoms of a food allergy.

Eliminating beef and chicken from her diet diminished the symptoms a bit but nothing really worked. I even tried rabbit and kangaroo. Each did a little but when I combined them, she got better. But only for a couple of months.

One day Haley refused to eat her food. This was remarkable because Haley is a very enthusiastic eater. In less than 60 seconds she empties her bowl and starts eying Cody’s. To that point I tried maybe 15 different brands looking for the one protein and formula she could tolerate. And one meal of any food is all I needed to determine whether she was allergic to the food or not, similar to what happens with peanut allergies.

After a few months on an improved diet
and lots of hugs, Haley begins to shine.
She was easily spooked and very shy.
Not so any more. Folks on our daily
walks often comment on her amazing
transformation.

All I had on hand after she refused her current food was Cody’s Blue Buffalo Salmon and Potato. I gave her a bowl. Twenty minutes later, magic … no reaction. Consequently, I know exactly what Bennett and his team of nutritionists are faced with and what they are doing. This makes me love Pima Animal Care Center even more. They don’t have to try but like me, yes, they do.

The Mountain We Have to Climb

In a subsequent email, Bennett told me in general how much dog food they purchase. (No cat food, dry or wet is included in the calculation.) “We go through about 5,000 bags of just dog food a year, so close to 200,000 lbs. …”

That translates to 100 tons. A lot but we here in Tucson can reach that goal. There are 130 neighborhoods. If 50 neighborhoods participated in the Rescued Critters Food Drive and collected 4,333 lbs. each year, that would do it. However, as energized as our Miles Neighborhood is, we are destined to get way more than 4,333 pounds.

This week we donated 172.8 pounds of dog and cat food. The most to date. The cash donation was $22.10.

See you Sunday,

Peter

Week 17 - Rescued Critters Food Drive

Hi Folks,

We are 32% into our year, and we already donated 42% of our goal

To date, we donated 1,811.7 lbs. of pet food to PACC and this is just our 17^th week. At the end of our 52^nd week, the goal is 4,333 lbs. or 2.2 tons. Just a quick look at the numbers you can see we are almost half way there, putting us a full 9 weeks ahead of schedule. Your generosity is amazing and I am very proud to call you my neighbors. 

	Food	Cash	Total lbs. including cash ($0.90 per lb.)
1st Quarter Totals	40.2 lbs.	$177.87	237.8 lbs.
2nd Quarter Totals	235.5 lbs.	$1204.59	1,573.9 lbs.
	257.7 lbs.	$1,38,46	1,811.7 lbs.
Rescued Critters Food Drive began September 9, 2018. Therefore, our fiscal year runs from September 1st through August 31st. CURRENTLY – There are 53 Participants Week Date Pet Food Cash Check 1 October 7 9.4 lbs. $321.75 $10.00 2 October 14 16.6 lbs. $25.75 ---------- 3 October 21 7.8 lbs. $35.11 $25.00 4 October 28 19.7 lbs. $163.76 ---------- 5 November 4 16.7 lbs. $48.55 $20.00 6 November 11 16.1 lbs. $23.80 $20.00 7 November 18 22.4 lbs. $34.65 ---------- 8 November 25 14.1 lbs. $82.50 $5.00 9 December 2 13.4 lbs. $101.15 $30.00 10 December 9 53.3 lbs. $28.90 $5.00 11 December 16 17.6 lbs. $44.10 $10.00 12 December 23 11.1 lbs. $68.80 $10.00 13 December 30 17.3 lbs. $70.77 $20.00 2nd Quarter  Totals 235.5 lbs. $1,049.59 $155.00 Pet Stores in California Will No Longer Be Able to Buy from Puppy Mills  Puppy mills just lost their store distribution vehicle in California which will take a big bite out of their profits. Last week we told you about the new law in England eliminating puppy and kitten sales at pet stores. The law states that “people wishing to adopt a puppy or kitten would have to deal directly with a breeder or a re-homing center, rather than pet shops or other commercial dealers.” In the Huffington Post on Wednesday, December 30, California announced a similar law that went into effect January 1, 2019. Pet stores in the state must deal with a public animal control agency, shelter or rescue group and that information must be posted on the display cases. Also, the pet stores must give those agencies access to their records. (Mouse over Huffington Post link below.) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-all-rescue-pet-stores_us_5c2912f5e4b05c88b7017ec7 California always likes to be first but no state in the union will mind being second when it comes to protecting puppies and kittens.  Donating Dollars is Making More Sense to Folks The sun was not shining so Haley decided to follow suit. This week we got way more dollars than cans of pet food. Of course, everyone was busy with Christmas week, but I find my neighbors reach for their wallets or into their pockets soon after I knock. Or they already have an envelope stuck in their door. My thinking is .90 cents per pound for pet food is proving to be quite the motivator. We donated 17.3 lbs. of dog and cat food and a hefty $90.77 in cash or check.  See you Sunday, Peter