Choose an article below
- Life-saving breath for animals
- Pet Soup Kitchens: Serving food for dogs and comfort for owners.
- CNN Reports: Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen
- Tough Times Prompt Creation of Pet Soup Kitchen
- 11 Alive: Daffy’s Founder, Tom Wargo Interviewed
- Georgia Man Starts Nonprofit Food Bank For Pets (Greatest Person Of The Day)
Life-saving breath for animals
Pet food bank is next project
By Kathy Bridges
kbridges@barrowcountynews.com
POSTED Feb. 18, 2009 8:28 a.m.
The Barrow County Fire Department has a new lifesaving tool for pets. Tom Wargo, founder of SOS Club and Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen, presented six sets of animal oxygen masks to the department on Thursday.
“We were in contact with Chief [Robert] Post after we were contacted by concerned citizens of Barrow County about the masks,” said Wargo. “After raising most of the funds for this project, we ordered the masks to get them to Barrow when fire season is high, when it’s cold.”
The life saving masks come in a set of three different sizes to fit most animals and include the tubing to hook to the oxygen tank. The cost of each set is less than $100, including shipping, handling, and delivery to the station. The masks are the same that veterinarians use when anesthetizing animals.
“We have six engines and will put a set on each truck,” said Post. “We had them in Gwinnett the last 12 years I was there and we didn’t use them often, but they are good tools to have.”
Wargo founded the SOS Club in 1997. SOS is a non-profit, 501(c) 3, tax exempt corporation. Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen is a Program of SOS Club which started in early 2008. The first actual Pet Soup Kitchen opened in September of 2008 in Lawrenceville and has since grown to sometimes handing out over 12,000 lbs of pet food per month.
The group now has pet food banks in Athens and College Park with plans to add up to 10 more this year in the state and up to six in other states.
“We are working to start another pet food bank in Barrow,” said Wargo.
See the website at www.daffyspetsoupkitchen.com.
Pet Soup Kitchens
Serving food for dogs and comfort for owners.
By JoAnna Lou
This article first appeared in The Bark, Issue 53, Mar/Apr 2009
JoAnna Lou is a New York City-based researcher, writer and agility enthusiast.
As the economy struggles, animal shelters across the nation are facing a staggering increase in surrendered pets due to the economic downturn, and many shelters, and even food banks, have started offering pet food. According to the HSUS, 68 organizations nationwide currently offer pet food assistance to those in need, many supported by grants from the Humane Society’s Foreclosure Pets Fund established last year.
In California, the Santa Cruz SPCA distributes more than 7,000 pounds of food each month at Heather’s Pet Food Bank. Named after local songwriter and dedicated shelter advocate Heather Zir, the food bank has become one of the largest and longing running in the nation since opening 10 years ago.
This year, Heather’s Pet Food Bank has seen a 25 percent increase in demand. “People who used to donate are now coming to get food and supplies,” says Santa Cruz SPCA Executive Director Lisa Carter.
On the opposite coast, at Long Island, N.Y., Little Shelter’s Animal Soup Kitchen has also observed a striking demographic change in the past year.
“While once restricted to low income areas, people [looking for help] are now coming from all neighborhoods,” explains Little Shelter Communications and Events Manager Jodi Record. “Without assistance, many families would have no choice but to surrender their pets to the local animal shelter.”
Tom Wargo has made it his life’s mission to help Georgia families care for their pets during hard times. His volunteer-run organization, the SOS Club, has been distributing supplies for the past 11 years, and as the recession deepened, Wargo found that pet owners needed more formal assistance.
In September 2008, the SOS Club opened Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen in Lawrenceville, Ga., to keep up with increasing demand. During their first month, Daffy’s distributed 4,000 pounds of food in addition to pet supplies and discounted medical care. Now the soup kitchen averages 8,000 to 12,000 pounds each month and feeds 1,500 animals. With the growing need, plans are in the works to start five new locations in Georgia; the group is also working with others across the nation to open soup kitchens in other states.
“The goal is to keep families and pets together,” says Wargo, “We get calls every week from rescue groups with people who need to surrender their pets because they can’t afford food. It breaks their heart. Now shelters can refer owners to us for supplies and veterinarian care.”
Pets aren’t the only ones receiving support through the soup kitchen. Daffy’s encourages donation recipients to do a minimum of five volunteer hours each month at a local organization. It can be humbling to need the food pantry’s assistance, and the suggested service requirement fosters a sense of responsibility and importance. In tough times, Daffy’s has proven to be much more than just a food bank.
“At first some people are embarrassed to come,” explains Wargo, “but once they do, everyone sits in the office and swaps stories, ideas, and advice to help each other out. We have become a family for most and everyone acts like they’ve known each other for years.”
CNN Reports: Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen
CNN’s Don Lemon reports on a pet soup-kitchen keeping families and their best friends together.
Tough Times Prompt Creation of Pet Soup Kitchen
Tom Wargo is a man on a mission: To help people feed their pets. “There shouldn’t be any reason that people can’t afford to keep their pets.
But people are having to turn their dogs and cats in to shelters because they can’t afford to feed them or they can’t afford basic veterinary care,” he said.
Wargo recently opened Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen, a foo
bank in Lawrenceville that offers free or low cost pet food. “We don’t don’t ask how much money people have. That’s their personal story. It’s personal to them. If they drive here to get food than they can get it here,” he said.
Donations of pet food and supplies are also welcome. Wargo said he currently needs more cat food.
Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen also offers clients other resources, like referrals for discount veterinary care and low cost spaying and neutering. “Lifeline Spay and Neuter Clinic has spayed and neutered 20,000 animals since we’ve been in business for five years. We are a spay and neuter expert,” said Spokeswoman Elizabeth Burgner.
The Lifeline Clinic is one of several who partner with Daffy’s. She said spaying and neutering is free of charge in some cases and discounted and others.
Daffy’s Pet Soup kitchen is also offering other services to pet owners in need of assistance, like help with fencing so dogs don’t need to be chained.
Right now, the warehouse is filling up with food, but not clients so Wargo is trying to get the word out about his non profit venture. “We could help many more people if they knew about us,” he said.
Daffy’s Pet Soup kitchen is located at 2160 Oakland Industrial Court, suite 100, Lawrenceville GA 30044.
It is open for food pickups on the 1st and 3rd Monday and Thursday of the month from 3-6 pm, and the 2nd Saturday of the month from 9am to 12pm. For more information about hours and services, the website is DaffysPetSoupKitchen.com.
Click Here to see the video on 11alive’s website!
11 Alive: Daffy’s Founder, Tom Wargo Interviewed
Earlier this week, in one of her “Steals and Deals” stories, 11Alive’s Valerie Hoff told us about a food bank for pets in Lawrenceville. After the story aired, our phones rang off the hook. People wanted to learn more about it. So we invited the …
Click Here to see the video on 11alive’s website!
Georgia Man Starts Nonprofit Food Bank For Pets (Greatest Person Of The Day)
Fourteen years ago, food banks told Tom Wargo his idea to stock pet food for the needy was unnecessary.
“I said, ‘I’ll build shelves, I’ll build a storage unit, I’ll build something at your location and then I’ll stock it with pet food, so that if people come in, you can give them pet food,’” the Lilburn resident said.
They wouldn’t budge, so Wargo decided in 1997 to start his own nonprofit, the SOS Club, to meet the need. He bought pet food with his own money and gave it to people straight from his truck. Wargo says the dogs and cats he helped feed were often the only good thing in their owners’ lives.
“The people that I was helping were going to the local co-ops and local food banks to get people food, and they would bring the people food home and feed their animals with it,” he said. “They’re not going to let their animals starve, they’re not going to kill them at the pound, so they’re going to feed them, just like if you have kids.”
The effort expanded in 2008 when Wargo started Daffy’s Pet Soup Kitchen in Lawrenceville to give SOS a a physical location. It’s become one of the largest pet food banks in the nation, providing 600,000 pounds of food last year for dogs, cats and other pets in more than 60 counties in Georgia. Provisions include prescription food for pets with diseases such as diabetes or cancer.
A number of other Daffy’s locations and similar organizations have since popped up across the nation, although the Lawrenceville headquarters — which will soon move to Lilburn — remains the largest.
Wargo also cares about preventing unwanted pets. Daffy’s requires pets to be spayed or neutered in order for their people to get pet food, and helps by directing people to centers that offer the services at a discount.
“If you can’t afford one [dog], you definitely can’t afford one plus 10 puppies,” he said.
Adding to his todo list, Wargo also rescues pets during natural disasters.
“When the tornadoes hit in northwest Georgia, I’m up there trapping cats, two and a half hours away, staying in a dumpy hotel because most of them got wiped out by the tornado,” he said. He brought in about 15,000 pounds of food for the April crisis.
Wargo says he wants to keep Daffy’s growing and keep spreading the word about spaying and neutering so that fewer animals wind up being abandoned and ultimately put down.
“If you come to us for help,” he said, “your dog gets to stay at home and stay happy, he’s sleeping in his bed with you, and he’s fed. He’s great.”
For more information, check out Daffy’s website.
(Editor’s Note: This article is featured on Huffington Post as part of its Greatest Person of the Day series.)