HSLC and the Loudoun Community Step Up to Help with Hurricane Florence Relief
Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas hard in mid-September, impacting homes, people, and pets. Our caring volunteer, Jennifer, wanted to help the hurricane victims so the Humane Society of Loudoun County (HSLC) stepped in to make it happen. Between Sept 16th and 23rd (just one week!) HSLC worked with Jennifer to organize, collect, and send her off to deliver relief to the area. We reached out to our network of community businesses, fellow rescues, and volunteers to make it happen.
Some other area animal rescues stepped up to work with us. Fancy Cats collected pet food donations and HART volunteer Kerry Kieger and crew helped at our trucks.
We put out a plea for donations and the response was overwhelming. Avalon Consulting provided pet food donations as well as monetary donations for us to buy supplies to take down to the hurricane relief area. Clarus Merchant Services was very generous to provide donations allowing us to rent two trucks for all the supplies we collected and cover expenses there and back. HSLC donors also stepped up to provide funds for us to buy supplies for the hurricane victims.
We contacted Spanky’s Shenanigans in Leesburg for some advice because they helped with Hurricane Harvey last year. 
They immediately offered to help us “stuff a truck” at their weekly Wednesday Yappy Hour. Thank you to owner Azmi, servers Katie & Joanie, and all their wonderful friends and patrons (both two and four legged) who helped. Just a few doors down, our friend Darla at the Leesburg Petsmart worked to collect a large pallet of pet food donations, personally delivering them to Spanky’s.
Our “stuff a truck” efforts didn’t end at Spanky’s. We obtained permission from the Dulles Landing Petsmart in Chantilly to park our truck at their store to continue collecting donations from Friday to Sunday. Thank you to managers Corey, Andrew, and Lauren. Coal Fire Pizza manager Alexandra ran into us in the parking lot and set up a fundraiser at their restaurant to help with the cause.
HSLC was already scheduled to attend the “Caturday” event at Gum Springs Library on Saturday Sept 22nd so we arranged to have the donation truck in their parking lot that day. Thank you to Jessica Moore and team!
On the evening of Sunday September 23rd Jennifer, Katie, and Kyle set out to deliver our relief supplies to NC. After navigating though the hurricane devastated areas, their first stop was at A Dogs Dream in New Bern. This was one of the harder hit areas. A Dogs Dream is a boarding and grooming facility which opened up their doorsto receive donations and continued to be a distribution point during the coming weeks.
Watch this video of Jennifer and team at A Dogs Dream.
The next stop for our intrepid wanderers was to Loaves and Fishes in Beaufort, a ministry pantry that acted as a distribution center for the pets and people of Beaufort in need of supplies. It’s ran alongside local churches there. Craven Pamlico Animal Services Center received donations as well. Both of these facilities continued to get the call to help for weeks to come.
Then it was on to Cause for Paws in Raleigh, our point of contact for finding out where the supplies were needed. They were one of the rescues who helped the over 200 animals at the Raleigh fairgrounds and continued to help flood victims in the continued weeks.
Thank you to all the HSLC volunteers who helped to make this happen: Melissa, Anne, Molly, Christina, Kerry, Theresa, Juanita, Sharon, Julia, Melanie, Katie, and Kyle. And, of course, a big thank-you to Jennifer.