Dog'ged Juniors

Well I finally did it... since I can drive now, I signed up to volunteer at the local humane society this summer.  I had my training this week and I start next week.  Unfortunately I don't actually get to work with the dogs for a while - all the newbie volunteers get to spend four weeks on laundry duty before we can move up to anything else.  It's pretty simple stuff, but I'm still kind of nervous and afraid I'll find a way to screw it up... hehe.  Then after I finish my four weeks, I can become a dog walker - and if I do really well at that, I can get 'promoted' to dog training, which is what I really want to do.

So has anyone here ever volunteered at an animal shelter?  What was it like?  I'm lucky to have a really nice humane society in my city, so it's not *too* depressing.  I'm sure there's more of a need for volunteers down at Animal Control... but I just don't think I could deal with that right now.  I figure at least I'll be doing something this way.  What I really want to do is foster rescue dogs, but I have no time/space/money for that at the moment.  And I figure that this will be good practice in not adopting every single animal I get attached to, which will hopefully cut down on future "foster failures" (well, in theory at least... some failure will be inevitable, I'm sure )    

Wow, that's great. I've never volunteered at an animal shelter (although I have wanted to before).

I am thinking about fostering once we move into a house too. I might just foster litters of kittens for now, though. All of the programs I've looked into here pay for food, veterinary care, kennels, etc.

Anyway - good luck volunteering! I'm sure you'll love it.

Well I just did my second shift today.  It was pretty laid-back, which was nice; last week it was kinda crazy and I ended up folding as much laundry in 2 hours as I usually do in about a month.  I still can't wait for the next 2 weeks to be done with so that I can actually interact with the dogs though; it's kind of torture being in a building full of dogs and not even being allowed to pet any of them.  Heck, I wish I could just skip ahead to training them... yes I admit it, I watched too much "Dogtown" back when we had cable   (and before NatGeo cancelled it )  Interesting fact- the dog adoption area at our Humane Society happens to be called "Dog Town."  I know it's been around longer than the TV show but I still thought it was kinda funny. 

Thats so cool!!! I wish I could volunteer at our animal shelter but here you have to be 18. Good luck and have fun!!!!

Yeah, our shelter will let people under 18 volunteer -- but only if a parent volunteers alongside them... I know that from a legal persepective it makes sense, but it does seem kind of silly that a 16 or 17 year-old would need their parents to come along and 'supervise' them the whole time... at least for the jobs that don't involve hands-on interaction with the animals. 

Speaking of which, this week will be my last required week of laundry duty   That means I can finally sign up to get 'trained' to be a dog walker... no idea how long that's actually going to take, but hopefully I can get it done soon... like I said, I can't stand being surrounded by dogs and not even being allowed to go near them - especially the ones that look like they're begging for attention   I can't wait to get started - apparently dog walkers have to go through a lot of training, and attend a behavioral seminar and stuff.  I'm actually pretty excited for that - I think I'm secretly hoping that my 10+ years of being of being obsessed with dogs will pay off and I'll already know most of the stuff   Hehe... we'll see... anyway it should be quite interesting.

16 and 17 is pushing it a bit, let  alone 18. Aren't you legally allowed to work at 16 years old?

Yay for signing up to become a dog walker! I'm surprised they actually have a training session for that. Will you only be walking dogs, or is there more to it? I'm sure you'll do great.

I guess we have to have a training session (several, actually) because the HS has a very specific protocol for handling dogs, and all the volunteers have to do it exactly the same way so the dogs have consistency.  We also do a little bit of training with them to help them develop good manners - nothing major, just walking nice on a leash, not barging through doors, etc.  

I'm done with my official training sessions and now I just have to shadow a current dog walker for a while (still waiting to hear back about that).  I decided that I'm going to walk dogs in the Guest Lodging area, instead of the dogs that are out on the adoption floor.  Guest Lodging is where they keep the dogs that, for whatever reason, aren't ready to go up for adoption yet.  I heard that they need more people back there, and plus I kind of prefer to work behind the scenes.  And also there's less paperwork to read and fill out, which is always nice