Sheltered Dogs Living the High Life

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Oct 29, 2007 3:00PM

Speaking from experience, pet owners can often go overboard in treating their pets as "a part of the family." Just the other night we treated Emmy to some slices of duck salami and Fleur de Maquis cheese from Pastoral's new Loop location. We've also been known to bake our own dog biscuits.

Which makes a story we read in today's Sun-Times warm us even more. Ted Lownik, a part-time Barraco's pizza deliveryman, has been delivering food scraps from work to the Animal Welfare League shelter in Chicago Ridge since late March. The idea came to Lownik during the tainted pet food scare last spring. The Animal Welfare League was forced to destroy most of its inventory once the recalls began. Lownik told the Sun-Times that he saw how his own dogs lit up when he brought home scraps from work, so he asked Animal Welfare employees if he could bring some over for their dogs. Since that initial phone call, Lownik has delivered more than 4.6 tons of scraps to the shelter with the blessing of his bosses. That's the kind of good press that most pizza joints would kill to receive.