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SACRAMENTO—

The price of life is causing our shelters to fill up; many families can’t afford to pay for pet food.

“It’s sad, its heart wrenching a lot of times to see these folks. They are coming in crying. They don’t want to give up their pets,” said Gina Knepp with the Sacramento County Animal Shelter.

A new non-profit program is helping families keep their pets. It’s called “Pet Food Stamps” and it’s similar to food stamps, but it’s not federally funded.

“I think it’s rather exciting and ingenious. There is defiantly a need in our country to help people who have pets to prevent them from surrendering them because they can’t afford to feed them,” Knepp.

If you qualify for food stamps, you qualify for this. The program has only been around for less than a month, but already they’re getting three thousand requests for help a day.

“It will give them some time to find someone in their world – a friend, a relative – who can take on ownership of that animal versus resorting to a shelter,” said Knepp.

The program is run through Pet Food Direct, an online company. So, for the families who qualify for this help, the food is delivered to their front door every month.

To sign up, head over to the website at http://www.petfoodstamps.org (website may be experiencing intermittent outages).