Dinner Date with a Sanctuary Guest!

As many of you are aware, we service the neediest of animals in the community at our beautiful Ashford Sanctuary. For a considerable amount of our animals, our Sanctuary was their only option and we’re grateful to open our doors and provide these amazing animals with the utmost care. Most of these animals have special needs, especially medical needs that involve constant nursing care, medication, and frequent vetting and treatments. A nutritious diet is a big part of these animals’ rehabilitation and journey towards being happy and healthy!

Not only are these foods nutritious and include high quality ingredients, but often times these animals require prescription food prescribed by their vets to continue a steady course of health. Between diabetic dogs or cats needing help with kidney function, eating the right diet is incredibly crucial to a stable, healthy life. Eating the right food certainly sounds easy enough! However, with the growing population of animals needing prescription food and the increasing prices of this special food, our food budget seems to be expanding more and more each year. Of course, we will always go above and beyond to provide the highest quality of care for our animals, but we need your help now more than ever, especially as we plan to slowly roll out the opening of our new cottages!

So what animals are on prescription foods and why?! A very special guest comes to mind, our sweet survivor Gumball. Gumball came to our Ashford Sanctuary from a foster home where he wasn’t getting along with the other dogs. Prior to that, he was sadly thrown off a bridge in North Carolina, but astonishingly survived, though he does suffer from brain damage. You’d think that awful event alone would be the last of Gumball’s challenges, but he was later diagnosed with diabetes, has a difficult time gaining weight, and also has an intestinal parasite that we’re trying to help him overcome. Every minor tweak in his care can be detrimental to his overall rehabilitation and health, and his diet is a very large part of that with his diabetes. Therefore, Gumball is on a prescription diet of Purina Pro Plan HA Hydrolyzed Canine Formulas which contains hydrolyzed protein, a protein that has been broken down into small components to be less likely to cause an adverse food reaction. We made the switch from Royal Canin Canine Glycobalance, another prescription food best for adult dogs that need support with their blood glucose levels- but thankfully our other diabetic dog, Arya, eats that food and it didn’t go to waste! Overall, despite Gumball’s health seeming like an uphill battle, we’re grateful that we know one piece of the medical puzzle and he is doing great with his current prescription diet!

If you’d like to help buy dinner for our amazing animals like Gumball, please consider purchasing a Chewy gift card! We purchase all of our prescription food on Chewy since it is very efficient and a one stop shop for the many different diets we have at the Sanctuary! Without even leaving the comforts of your own home, you can help us with a Chewy gift card by purchasing an online gift card and sending it to the email address [email protected]! We are grateful for any amount you can provide!

Another way you can help us out? Spread the word! You can download our flyer, share the news on our Facebook, or print out a copy and post it in your community! Thank you for your continuous, compassionate support for our Sanctuary animals!