RARA revives Rockbridge pet food pantry

Written in association with The Rockbridge Report, read the article here.

The Rockbridge Area Relief Association is launching a drive-through pet food pantry in January, filling a void created when a volunteer-run animal alliance closed more than two months ago.

Shadrey Sands, RARA’s grocery manager, said the Rockbridge Animal Alliance’s board of directors turned to his organization early this year.

“They kind of had an idea that their organization was not super sustainable and didn’t know if they had a future beyond 2025,” he said. “They reached out to us to make sure that this pet food pantry had a home.”

The new distribution will be held on the third Tuesday of each month. Volunteers will meet cars, ask drivers about pet types and ages, and load food into vehicles.

Sands said the pet food pantry will operate on a day when RARA’s free neighborhood grocery is closed to prevent overcrowding.

“Right now, with our distributions, we have folks lining up already an hour or two hours early before we open,” he said. “If we included pet food in there, it’s going to make it even more intense.”

Maurine Houser, the alliance’s former board president, said the pantry’s closure in September left families with few options.

“Our clients who were seniors will give their food to their pet before they eat it themselves,” she said. “I know how many of them — their only companionship is their pet.”

Houser said many of the people she served were already struggling to buy pet food before the program closed.

“I’m scared for them. I really am,” she said. “I don’t know where they’re going to get the food their pets need.”

Closing the pantry

Houser, who led the organization for three years, said the hardest part of closing was telling families the pantry was no longer something the animal alliance could run.

“To not be able to support them so they can feed those animals—it was heartbreaking,” she said.

Before closing, the alliance served 55 to 75 households each month and more than 420 households over the past three years, Houser said.

For years, the animal alliance ran the pantry out of RARA’s warehouse, which had the storage space needed for pallets of donated pet food. The alliance’s volunteers operated the distribution on days the warehouse was already staffed for grocery pickups.

Houser said the animal alliance had struggled to compete for grants because most animal-related funding is tailored to rescues or shelters.

Board members also worked full-time jobs and couldn’t volunteer enough hours to serve the growing number of people and pets who needed help, she said.

“There just wasn’t enough time in the day for the intensity of the work that needed to be done,” she said.

Rising food costs

The animal alliance obtained most of its pet food from Gleaning For The World, a Virginia-based humanitarian nonprofit that supplies donated pallets of pet food from distributors. Houser said the alliance had to pay only shipping costs.

A pallet usually costs the animal alliance about $200, compared to a retail value of above $2,000. Sands said RARA plans to continue using Gleaning For The World.

Sands said demand for pet food mirrors the growing need for food for people across Rockbridge County. RARA’s neighborhood grocery, which opens Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, now serves 70 to 80 households per opening — up from about 50 households two months ago.

“We are seeing record highs,” he said. “Everyone’s hurting from the food prices right now.”

Pet food has been the most common request in RARA’s suggestion box, which lets clients note items they struggle to afford.

Sands said he expects the new pet food pantry to serve 50 to 70 households each month. “I’m probably going to overestimate on the first one just to make sure we have enough,” he said.

He said the new pet food pantry will ease the pressure on families who have been waiting for help since the animal alliance shut down in September.

“We believe fully that everyone deserves dignity,” Sands said. “They shouldn’t have to face some of these hard questions of do they have to rehome a dog, or do they have to pay their light bill?”