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Meals on Wheels launches new initiative in effort to keep seniors and pets together

"I think most people would feed their pets before they feed themselves. So, this helps minimize that from happening."

Meals on Wheels now includes pet food to keep seniors and pets together.

Pets make amazing companions. They not only keep you company but it's been proven that they are great emotional support. Many senior citizens take comfort in having a furry friend around when they're living alone or caregiving for an ailing partner.

But having a pet can become a financial burden that not all elderly people can afford. Instead of doing the unimaginable, giving up their pet, some elderly people will go without eating to make sure their pets have food. Many senior citizens are on a fixed income, causing them to make difficult financial decisions including forgoing important medications and feeding their pets.

Programs like Meals on Wheels make sure that elderly individuals are eating at least one hot meal a day, and it's free of charge. Meals on Wheels is a national program that reduces elderly hunger while also helping to provide elderly people living alone with human contact.


Recently, Meals on Wheels in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, started including an addition to their program–pet food. Elder Services of Berkshire County, which has been providing meals for seniors, teamed up with Berkshire Humane Society and Berkshire Family & Individual Resources (BFAIR) to start a pet assistance program for meal recipients according to iBerkshires.com.

The Berkshire County Meals on Wheels program will deliver pet food once a month to elderly program members who cannot get to the store. Since many of the people that receive meals from the food program are on a fixed income, it's also a probability that some of the members cannot afford pet food even if they could get to the store.

Elder Services Community Services Director Kayla Brown-Wood tells iBerkshire, "I think most people would feed their pets before they feed themselves. So, this helps minimize that from happening. It's just a really great collaboration and the idea is to be able to help those people that might not have the means to come here and visit the emergency pet food bank at Berkshire Humane Society. So, it's just another way to help bridge that gap and that need in the community."

meals on wheels; pet food delivery; meals on wheels and pets; elderly care and pets; pet and elderly care

Black and tan long-coated dog with elderly man

Photo by Donna Cecaci on Unsplash

The national Meals on Wheels organization also helps elderly people keep their pets in the home by partnering with PetSmart Charities. The partnership has "helped more than 25,000 Meals on Wheels clients remain at home and together with their beloved companions," according to the Meals on Wheels website.

They don't stop with helping to provide meals for humans and their pets. Meals on Wheels helps support local programs that provide pet food, grooming services as well as veterinary services to the animals of elderly people who may not be able to afford it otherwise.

Meals on Wheels says, "97% of clients receiving pet assistance say that Meals on Wheels has made it possible for them to keep their loving companion, according to our research with partner PetSmart Charities."

The partnership between Meals on Wheels and PetSmart Charities ensures that the pets of seniors have the things they need, like cat litter, nail trims, free boarding and even transportation to the veterinarian. Pets become part of your family, and with seniors that are homebound, their Meals on Wheels delivery person and their pet may be the only interaction they receive. It's amazing to see that this essential program is not forgetting about the animal companions living with the seniors they serve.

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As we get older, sometimes our bodies get a little slower and our physical worlds get a little smaller. But that doesn't mean our minds or our hearts have to do the same.

95-year-old Ruth Bryant is proof of that.

She dedicated her life to helping people learn, teaching kids and adults on two continents — a dedication that earned her a presidential medal for service. Even now, when her life is mostly limited to her home, she's still learning — this time from her Meals on Wheels volunteers.


Ruth was born in Chicago, the youngest of five sisters. By the time she was 12, her mother was widowed and looking for a new place to raise her family.

They hit the road, trading the Windy City for balmy, sunny Santa Monica, California. The ocean breeze, the flowers, the people, the city — everything made them feel welcome. And they never looked back.

Pictured: Heaven, also known as the Santa Monica pier at sunset. Image via Michael Wu/Flickr.

As Ruth grew up in her new hometown, she focused her future on one goal: becoming a teacher.

After all, it's a profession that runs in her family.

Ruth's mom liked to tell her daughters about her time teaching kindergarten through sixth grade to students in a small one-room schoolhouse "in the middle of the country." Like many teachers at the time, she was only 15 — barely an adult herself — and would ride her horse to the schoolhouse to teach.

One day in the middle of lessons, she watched her horse get loose and run away. As any teenager would do in the situation, she ran outside, sat on the stoop, and started to cry. Then, one by one, her students came outside to comfort her until an entire classroom's worth of kids joined her crying on the stoop in solidarity and support.

For Ruth, hearing that story from her mom was the moment she knew she wanted to teach. "That's unconventional and unconditional love," she said. "I knew I wanted to experience that too."

Ruth's dedication to teaching and empowering kids stayed with her through her entire teaching career.

She learned quickly that her philosophy of teaching was a little out of the ordinary. Lectures followed by worksheets followed by tests — that kind of teaching might work for other educators. But Ruth wanted to do things differently.

"My philosophy is that if you have students and you tell them something and they know it, that can be forgotten right away," explained Ruth. "But if you present something in a creative way, they get immersed and they want to be a part of it. It becomes a part of their very being."

Ruth on the phone for this interview. Image by Angel Howe, used with permission.

Her unique, thoughtful, creative way of looking at things helped move her career in fascinating directions. Including Venezuela.

Accepting an invitation from two of her students, Ruth started visiting Venezuela as a volunteer teacher in the early 1970s. She fell in love with the country at first sight. Over the next three decades, she went back every single summer to train teachers in creative ways of educating, earning the nickname the "Teacher of Teachers."

After returning from a summer abroad in the mid-1990s, Ruth learned that she was being considered for an award. Suddenly, she was back on a plane to Venezuela to accept a medal for service from then-President Rafael Caldera and the Minister of Education. "It was a great, great, great honor to me to have a president of a country give me a medal for the work that I'd done in their country, a teacher from California," Ruth recalled.

Ruth's medal from the president of Venezuela. Image by Angel Howe, used with permission.

Though she retired many years ago, Ruth still values teaching — only the tables have turned a little.

Ruth started using Meals on Wheels a few years ago after it became increasingly difficult to leave her home and care for herself. For many of the same reasons she valued her students and fellow teachers, Ruth loves her Meals on Wheels volunteers.

Meals on Wheels, she said, has been an actual lifesaver, helping her stay independent and live in her home. And while she is grateful for the food, it's the community and companionship that she finds truly rewarding.

"I'm hoping that people will understand that the meal that is delivered is good for the body. But Meals on Wheels also delivers food for the soul. They deliver smiles, compassion, companionship."

For Ruth, her experience with her Meals on Wheels volunteers is an extension of her lifelong love of teaching — but she's the student now.

"I learn so much from the people who visit me with Meals on Wheels, about their lives and their stories. We form friendships and real, lasting bonds. This program makes a real difference in people's lives to remind them to keep going on and keep living," she said.

"Ultimately, it's about delivering happiness."

Family

This 83-year-old spent his life helping others. After a stroke, he found himself in need.

Julius Gaines devoted his entire life to helping others. After a stroke, he needed a little help himself. So Meals on Wheels stepped in.

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83-year-old Julius Gaines has always thrown himself into everything he's involved with.

A Berkeley graduate, Julius spent most of his career as a psychologist in the Berkeley school district. In 1982, he pioneered the development of a program to help kids develop healthy ways to process their emotions during difficult times (it had the cheerful acronym WINGS — winning, interacting, noting, growing, smiling).


All images via Ad Council/YouTube.

His work to help others didn't stop there. He was also a community organizer in Oakland, forming a committee that encouraged community members to invest in and protect their community.

"I just wanted to be helpful," he humbly told Upworthy. And he definitely was. Under his leadership, the committee lasted for a number of years.

Chatting with Julius now, it's clear his days are still full. He's one of those people who always has a million projects going.

He's on the board of his neighborhood association. He's creative and spends a lot of his time exploring and indulging this creativity. He's written a book of poems to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of his aunt. He's dabbled in photography and recently started using some of his photographs to print cards. And people like his work; he has a number of orders that he's in the process of filling. And more than anything, it's obvious he loves to learn and challenge himself. When he wrote his book, he had no idea about the process.

But he made up his mind to do it and dove in.

"You learn. You just say, 'I'm going to do that.' How are you going to do it? Well, you find out how to do it," he said.

But things aren't as easy as they used to be. A normally independent person, he's found himself in need of assistance after suffering a stroke and battling health issues.

He jokingly said he spends his days at the Kaiser Medical Center. His health is at the forefront of his mind. It's the one thing keeping him from moving at lightning speed at all times. He relies on Meals on Wheels to give him the freedom to continue living his life, his way.

That's the thing about getting older. Your body sometimes tells you no.

And when that happens, organizations like Meals on Wheels step in to ease the burden on someone's plate. And for an independent person who is used to not only taking care of himself, but helping to take care of others, it's an invaluable service.

Watch Julius' story here:

Julius is grateful that Meals on Wheels has freed him up to take care of his health and continue doing the things he wants to do. He can't consistently make his own meals and shop, so he needs to rely on Meals on Wheels for that.

His stroke and health difficulties haven't taken over his life, but they've become a big part of it. It's a reality he deals with head-on, similar to how he approaches his projects. He says:

"You know, you put your toe in the water and you think you're going to freeze because the
water's cold, but the water's not that cold. Then you put your whole foot in. Then finally you put your whole body in. Then you begin to swim."

With all of the projects on his plate filling his busy days and presenting fun and new challenges, Julius is definitely swimming.