New Donation Drop-off Location

We are pleased to announce  new locations for donations. Pet’s General Store 16821 Madison Avenue in Lakewood 216-226-0886 Please tell them it is for My Best Friend’s Bowl and if you’d like a donation letter, tape your name and address on the bag. We’ll make sure you get one right away!

And Pet Supplies Plus 14839 Detroit Avenue Lakewood OH 216-6827 In the Marc’s Plaza. Look for the blue donation bin by the checkout. If you would like a donation letter, tape your name and address on the bag.

Holiday Giving

The holidays are approaching and low-income families are scrambling to come up with at least one gift for their loved ones while still struggling with feedingtheir pets. Please consider a food donation to MBFB. A 10lb or larger bag of dog or cat food will be a big help to these families. Your donation can be dropped at the Lakewood Community Services Center 14230 Madison Ave in Lakewood Monday thru Friday 10am to 2pm and they are open again every Wednesday from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. Help out a famly in need and enable them to save a few dollars on pet food that will allow them to make a small bright spot for their loved ones holiday season.

Volunteer Opportunities

My Best Friend’s Bowl Volunteer Opportunities

Promotions: Work at table at pet related events and pass out MBFB materials or sell raffle tickets. Help us for an hour or as long as you want!

Event Planning: Help plan and hold an event/fundraiser for MBFB. Obtain raffle basket items from local merchants. Put out event flyers around town.

Food packing: We need people to re-package food at home. Food, packing supplies, scale and labels will be dropped at your home and we will pick up a week later. Time needed: once a month and take the whole week to do it! Bags of food dropped off can weigh up to 50 pounds.

Food packing: Meet with our group at various Lakewood locations for a “mass bagging” event. The group will weigh, re-pack large bags into small and place labels. All supplies will be provided.

Collect food from a social group: If you are active in Boy or Girl Scouts, your church, child’s school or any other organization, you can stage a collection drive. We will pick up the donations from you. We will provide flyers for you to post.

Office collection drive: Engage your co-workers to stage a donation drive. We will provide flyers for you to post. We will pick up your donations.

Make a personal donation: Donations of dry dog and cat food can be dropped off at:

Lakewood Community Services Center
14230 Madison Avenue, Lakewood
Monday thru Friday 10:00am thru 2:00pm and again on Wednesdays from 5:30 thru 7:30

Rocky River Wine Bar
1313 Linda Street Rocky River
during regular business hours.

If dropping off food at either location be sure to let them know it is for My Best Friend’s Bowl and leave your name and address attached to the bag.

Contact us for other options: 216-482-0646 or click here to e-mail us.

Yappy Hour at Pet-Tique for My Best Friend’s Bowl

We have to give a huge thanks Pet-tique, Lawrence and Kevin and the great crowd that turned out to support MBFB and what we do. $626.00 (!!!!) was raised to help us continue to provide food to people that can not afford to feed their pets and prevent a situation where they may need to surrender their pets to a shelter. We could not do what we do without the caring people that donate to make this possible.

Many, many thanks goes out to Flaming Ice Cube Cafe in downtown Cleveland for the delicious display of vegan food, Muddy Paw Winery for the wonderful wine, In the Doghouse for the nail trims (tough job!) and David Uschold for the photography sessions and the donation of a raffle prize for a personal sitting with your pet/pets. Be sure to look at his link to find yours. The pet food treats line, Stella and Chewy’s were also helping us out with a portion of their sales coming to My Best Friend’s Bowl.

The weather was beautiful, the attendees fun, generous and absolutely animal lovers. Good food, good wine and really good people and we can’t forget all the dogs! They were a highlight! THANK YOU ALL!

Please click on the links (website or facebook page) for more information on everyone that helped this night a big success. Click HERE for  link to David Uschold’s picture site. Great shots!

    

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Pet Food Recalls

Help Wanted! Help NEEDED!

My Best Friend’s Bowl is looking for some caring people to volunteer help us continue our mission – help people with financial problems keep their pets at home with them by providing them with food. This will help them maintain their pets health, stop owners from having to surrender them to shelters or just letting them out the door to fend for themselves.

What we need from you? A desire to help, a bit of your time, ideas that you have that will help our in our effort to maintain a supply of food or funds and people to just help in any way you can. The time involved is up to you. Do you have a few hours a week you can make calls to local pet stores or vet clinics to ask for a donation of food? Do you have experience in fundraising or event planning? Do you belong to a church or group that may organize a food donation drive? Can you spend an hour or so bagging food or dropping at a location where it will be re-packed or pick up donations at our drop off spots? Are you organized and can help with co-ordinating volunteers? We have a table at Spooky Pooch in October and will need people to help there too.  All of the above is needed. Our program has grown faster than we ever imagined and we need your help!

MBFB began one year ago in February 2011. At first, we gave out maybe 10 bags of cat food and the 7 bags of dog food at Lakewood Community Services Center per week. The amount has reached 60 bags of cat food and 40 bags of dog food a week and shows no signs of slowing down, over 350 lbs weekly. The supply gets low and we begin to worry if  we will have enough for the next week. We’ve had donation drives with great success and then in a week or so, that’s gone.

Here is the bottom line – we need you! Whatever you can do to help us will be so appreciated. Click HERE and send us some information about yourself and what you would like to help with. We’ll contact you by phone if you leave your number.

Don’t let this bowl go empty!

Grant Elementary School Collection

The wonderful kids at Grant Elementary held a collection drive for MBFB recently. The total collected was 385lbs! They did a fantastic job and deserve  a big thank you. Mrs. Lewis’ 4th grade class was the winner of the special lunch of pizza, veggies and fruit, dessert and pop for collecting 82.5lbs in their class.

Thanks go out to Julia Hayes and her student council group for organizing the event. The teachers at the school made the collection a learning experience, coming up with creative ideas to keep track of the weight collected, having the students make posters to display around the school and even making paw prints that the kids put their name on when they brought food in. They all had such a great time, they hope to do it next year.