Prime day pet supplies for you or your local animal shelter or pet rescue
Because these shelters are full, y'all
I know, I know, we are supposed to hate Prime Day. And I try to patronize small businesses whenever I can, because I am a small business, and I also don’t love participating in the machine to a significant degree. However, pet supplies are expensive, and when my dog needs treats or whatever and I’m short on time, Amazon (and also Chewy! I love Chewy, but I say that so much it annoys even me, but hey, Chewy rules) comes through.
I spend a lot of money on stuff for Hoover, and also send a few things to Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center and Montgomery County Humane Society when they remind me on social media about their critical needs. It’s pretty easy to tack on a bag of dry dog food to my list that is sent directly to the shelter, and while I’m not in the best financial strata of anyone I know, I know that what I have is more than a lot of people, and enough to kick in a bag of dog food now and then for dogs who are without a home. I want them to look shiny and healthy in their shelter photos so people will pick them. I basically want these animals to have the best “pick me” energy of all time.
Dogs and money and shelter situations are depressing
I can’t think too much about the impact of the current economic dip on families with pets, and about those pets. They often get left behind because families have to make tough housing choices. I wrote an article about this for my journalism school grad news bureau that I can’t seem to find on the internet anymore, about the numbers of pets being surrendered during the 2008 mortgage crisis. I went into shelters to interview the staff and adopters, and I will never forget that day, ever. It was a tough story for me, but it was important.
I have never been out of school debt, or middle class some-sort-of-debt, as an adult, and it’s caused a fair amount of stress in my life. What I have always had so far, in spite of addiction and mental illness, and some career instability as a result of those things, is a place to live, food to eat, means to get a job, and relatively stable physical ability that makes it possible for me to work in flexible and sometimes demanding situations. This is privilege, no matter how hard it’s felt sometimes. I have also had people (in my case, my parents) to help me care for my dogs when I had less than I’d had in my adult life, and they did that until I was able to work my way out.
It can seem inconceivable that anyone would leave their animals temporarily or permanently, but I think it’s one of those things that we cannot predict we’d ever have to do. And when it happens it’s just part of an avalanche of financial and personal crises where the alternatives can seem like numerous shades of impossible, so you start triaging them out from worst to best worst.
Many people simply do not have the infrastructure that I had to fall back on. And I don’t say this to totally lose every subscriber I have due to my depressive newsletter here, but I just want to say that caring for them costs money; it affects so many people who fall on hard times, and it’s when I’ve been in hard times that I’ve needed my dogs’ companionship the most.
You probably know this about the cost, if you have a dog or a cat or other pet. Hoover’s last dental treatment was FIFTEN HUNDRED DOLLARS. Fifteen. Hundred. Dollars. What? One of my part-time jobs is going to pay that this year because they didn’t tell me the cost over the phone and went ahead and did it. Do I want my dog to have what he needs in the way of teensy dog’s teensy teeth tooth care? One hundred and infinity percent. Would I have asked the vet to consider maybe extracting only the WORST teensy teeth if she’d told me the estimate over the phone? MAYBE. Also do you know she still shamed me for not brushing his teeth every day, when she knew she was charging me a rent payment for these teensy teeth? Word to your mother, she did.
(I love vets. It was just a shocking bill.)
There are also a lot of dogs in shelters right now. People got pandemic puppies and now they’re back at work or over it and they give them up (these people, I do judge. I’m sorry. I’m working on it.) Also inflation, and also housing is ridiculously expensive, and many places still charge a lot for pets. I feel badly that I can’t take in another dog right now, due to the size and situation in my apartment (which I love, but I’ll give up as soon as a more pet-friendly option presents itself and it feels like the right time to move again.)
All of this said, I want to encourage support of shelters and rescues, wherever you live. If you have a dog, and the means, maybe tack on an extra bag of food once a month. I can ship automatically to my local shelters from Chewy or Amazon, which is wildly convenient. I just gathered a box of toys Hoover got bored with, and I’m going to drop them by. They also often take volunteers to walk the dogs, play with the cats, or even take photos of the adoptable pets for their Pinder* profiles. If this is your jam, give them a google and give them a call. I bet they’d be happy to talk to you about volunteering. If you’ve ever met an animal care volunteer or lifer staffer, you probably know how hard they work and how much their hearts are devoted to this work. It takes a lot out of a person, and they can always use other hands.
So, herewith, all my pet finds on Amazon for Prime Day and whenever. (I super dig this snuffle mat! Gonna get one for me.) Save yourself some money, and maybe send some extra to your local animal support org. It’s a good time to do it, if you can.
xo,
Hoover
*Pet Tinder. Duh.