It’s hard to be a dog owner these days. First, the rental crisis is forcing a lot of dog-owning renters to surrender their pets. Now, cost of living pressures are making it hard for dog owners to feed their pooches.
However, help is on the way for dog owners in South Australia.
The Red Cross has expanded its humanitarian program to also include provisions of dog food. This is because families are surrendering their pets as they can no longer afford them.
Now, the Red Cross in Mount Gambier is also including dog food in their program so families can keep their family pets. The Red Cross are currently running a variety of different humanitarian based programs, which aims to relieve some of the pain from the rising cost of living.

Red Cross Mt Gambier is including dog food in their humanitarian service programs. Credit: Australian Red Cross.
Their breakfast cereal program has been the most successful so far, closely followed by their feminine hygiene program. However, they thought that if people were struggling to feed themselves, they might also be struggling to feed their dogs as well. Thus the dog food initiative was introduced.
Bags of dog food are being donated to the Mount Gambier centre by local animal rescue services.
So far, the community have been appreciative. Just like their other programs, there has been a significant uptake for the donated products when they update their availability on social platforms.
Locals have responded appreciatively to the program, with people from the community coming in to grab some dog food to ensure that their pets are well fed during this difficult time.

Some dog owners are struggling to feed their dogs due to the rising cost of living pressures.
The Most Vulnerable Are Struggling To Feed Themselves and Their Dogs.
While the rising cost of living increases have affected everyone, it is having a much larger impact on society’s most vulnerable. The recent increases in interest rates is only going to pile on the pressure even more.
However, the users of these humanitarian services have also expanded. Before, the most common users of the programs were vulnerable people requiring humanitarian services. While they still require these services, the Red Cross has noticed more ‘working poor’ families using their services.
‘Working poor’ families are families whose parents are both working but still struggle to make ends meet. These people were quite rare in the past, but now more and more ‘working poor’ families are using these services.

Red Cross Mt Gambier are including dog foods in their program to ensure that dog owners won’t have to surrender their dogs.
It’s incredible how many people are struggling to meet their weekly shopping budgets. It has caused people to force themselves to the door for the handouts of food, personal hygiene products, and other consumables.
However, the Red Cross doesn’t test who’s receiving the goods. If an individual comes in experiencing vulnerability, they’ll do their best to support the individuals with whatever they have. However, this also means that their rations are going out as quickly as they come in.
For example, Red Cross Mount Gambier has recently received more than 250 boxes of breakfast cereal. These were all handed out in less than two months. Other in-demand products are feminine hygiene products due to their higher costs in stores.
However, with dog food now also included in their humanitarian services programs, dog owners in South Australia doing it tough have some support to ensure that they don’t have to surrender their pets.