Humane Society has a truckload to give away

LACONIA — The New Hampshire Humane Society recently received a literal truck load of pet supplies, and they are sharing them with anyone in the community in need. On March 19, the society shared the news on social media, hoping to get takers for the mountain of bags of pet food and other goodies.

“The way we got most of this is a program called Pets for Life,” explained Charles Stanton, New Hampshire Humane Society executive director. “Through that partnership, they have a connection to Chewy.com, Chewy provides supplies of pet food, dog beds and cat trees to all of the Pets for Life partners.”

Stanton said that they were expecting a few small deliveries, in a manner similar to amazon packages.

“Instead it was an 18 wheeler truck that was brought into our parking lot that was packed to the ceiling,” Stanton said. While the massive amount of supplies were a much needed blessing, it was also a lot more than the shelter knew what to do with. The items were transferred to one of the out buildings on the property where the humane society normally conducts training for volunteers.

There’s so much food that Stanton is concerned that it could expire before they can give it all away.

“We’ve had it for six-ish months and we’ve been trying to distribute it,” Stanton said, blaming a lack of traffic on the pandemic and colder months.

“Now that things have started to warm back up, people have started to come out again, and it’s like Hallelujah! so that’s when we decided to promote it on social media,” Stanton said.

So far they’ve managed to give away a majority of what was stored in the barn, but there’s still plenty left over if anyone needs pet food. All they have to do is swing by and ask.

Stanton stated that he sees this blessing of food and supplies as a way to bring the community together and do some real good in a time of political anger and blame.

“Instead of blaming everybody for everything, what if we just try to do something to help families that are in need?” Stanton said. “This is something we know we can do, we have control over this particular set of items and we can help people with these things.”

The humane society is expecting similar sized shipments every three to six months, so Stanton encourages anyone who is in need to swing by for pet supplies.