A Ton of Help

Tri-City Tales Issue No. 34

After catastrophic floods swept through Central Texas on July 4, dozens of dogs and cats needed immediate evacuation. Pets that had become separated from their owners were inundating already crowded shelters. To make room, the non-profit Wings of Rescue flew down to evacuate 200 dogs and cats who had been awaiting adoption before the tragedy.

But Wings of Rescue didn’t want to show up empty handed. The day before the flight, they contacted Tri-City Animal Shelter director Tammy Miller, asking if she could donate pet food to the flood-devastated area. 

Miller immediately turned to Pet Supplies Plus in Cedar Hill. The store has been a dedicated partner of Tri-City since it opened just over a year ago, helping with donations, and housing adoptable cats. When store manager Julie Lane learned of the request, she hurried in on her day off to make sure the animals in Central Texas would get what they needed. “It was a tragic thing,” Lane says. “I wanted to be a part of something that could contribute.”

The day before the flight, Lane and her team went through the entire store inventory, setting aside more than 2,000 pounds of food and treats for the Central Texas shelters. Miller called her husband, who borrowed a flatbed truck from the city of Joshua to pick up the pallets of food and deliver them to Meacham Airport in Fort Worth, where the plane was waiting for takeoff.

Miller says Tri-City, with the help of local businesses like Pet Supplies Plus, always stands ready to hustle when other shelters are struck by disasters, once even taking in 58 displaced dogs from Lancaster after severe storms. “We want to be there when we are needed,” she says. It’s not only the right thing to do, “we can’t ever know if one day something is going to happen to us, and we are going to be the ones in need.”