CUMMING, Ga. — Scout Bagley of Cumming just launched a new initiative called Kibble2Care, which allows families to continue feeding their pets, even if they’ve fallen on tough times.
“We provide Georgia low-income residents with Kibble and other necessary care to reduce the amount of owner surrenders at local shelters,” she said.
Bagley, who works as a kennel technician at a local dog training facility, said she wasn’t planning to start these efforts yet, but the time seemed right.
“People were dropping off and surrendering their pets to the shelters. They couldn't afford them because they lost their jobs due to COVID-19,” she said. “When all of this happened, I was like ‘what better time to do it than now?’”
Bagley did what most people do when starting a new organization – she created a Facebook page that went live last week. Much to her surprise, that’s all it took for interested parties to start getting involved, she said.
“Little did I know, that whole night I was not sleeping because I was getting blown up from people saying things like ‘hey, can I donate stuff to you?” Then it just kind of escalated from there,” Bagley said. “We've actually helped seven families, 13 dogs, and 10 cats so far, and supplied them with a month worth of supplies. We raised $445 in monetary donations too, which is awesome, so hopefully we will be able to expand this a little bit more soon.”
She’s not alone in all of this. Bagley, who got married less than six months ago, said her husband is also helping out.
“He's the one who picks up all the dog food and stuff and puts it in the car,” she said. “We just started last week, but we’ve been picking up donations for like a week straight. So we have over 100 cans of ‘wet’ dog food, a few big bags of [dry] dog food, and then also cat food and cat litter. We are a little bit low on cat supplies, but we have a good amount. My friend is letting me use her garage/storage space right now to keep everything in, because we ran out of room.”
This is not Bagley’s first time helping animals. In fact, she’s held several events in recent years to support local shelters.
“The first one we did was about two years ago, and we did ‘Santa Claus for Paws,’” she said. “I wanted to give the animals in the shelter's toys and stuff like that to have on Christmas. On holidays, it's no different for them than just another day in the shelter, so I wanted to provide them with toys and treats. We did another one for my birthday called ‘Christmas in July.’ It was kind of the same thing. We did another one a few months ago. We have a friend that lives in south Georgia, and down there it's really rural and the shelters are not great. They don't have a lot of support and are really high-kill. So I did another event for them and brought down over 500 pounds of dog.”
It’s safe to say Bagley is an animal lover, and she said she will do whatever it takes to help someone keep their pet.
“We have a large problem in Georgia with owner surrenders and people kind of disposing of their pets,” she said. “I saw a lot of it throughout my years of working with it, and I want people to have an option to keep their pets. I don't want them to feel like they have to get rid of their pets due to financial reasons, or for any reason at all.”
To learn more about Kibble2Care, including how to donate and how to apply for assistance, CLICK HERE.
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