Volunteering | Finding the Right Shelter or Rescue

You’ve seen all the pictures of the dogs in distress, the cute puppies, the kitties, the little fur-balls.
They all have one thing in common – THEY NEED YOU! – NOW!

young orphans often starve or freeze to death because of lack of care

First, let’s look at the various shelters and rescues and the differences between them.
Let’s start with the worst of the worst:

The municipal shelter

a.k.a. animal care & control, the pound, animal services.

This is the shelter run by your county officials. Usually by the police department, sometimes by its own department, that reports to the city’s board of commissioners. If you the animals are lucky, the city has a humane commission, which works together with shelter and city officials to make recommendations on funding, changes to guarantee the welfare of the animals housed there.

The reality in the US is that most city shelters are underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed with animals. During puppy and kitten season cages fill quickly to and above capacity just over one weekend. Adoptions are chronically low as these so-called shelters are often not very conveniently located, nor are their visitor hours designed to draw the public in. Some shelters don’t even bother opening on weekends or have very limited hours.

corpse of a euthanized dog

Some shelters are so bad, they have an over 90 % (that’s NINETY PERCENT) kill rate of perfectly healthy animals. Their crime? They were born. Bred by people who wanted their children to see the miracle of birth (I’d like to take them into a euthanasia room to witness momma cat and kittens being murdered), thrown away because the owners moved, are suddenly allergic, the animal is too old, too ugly, too fat, doesn’t match the boyfriend, oh yeah, my favorite – a baby is on the way (so the fur baby get’s the boot). All common reasons animals end up on death row.
Still want to volunteer?

I beg you to.

Why?

Because these are the animals that need you the most.
They need YOU to care!!!

They only have you! Staff doesn’t have time to take pictures, write cute bios, CUDDLE?!?!
So, here’s what you can do at a high kill shelter:
Apply as a volunteer if they do not have a program, think about how you and a couple of friends could get one off the ground. It’s easier than you might think.
Manpower:

• dog walkers,
• photographers,
• foster volunteers,
• dog trainers,
• transporters,
• screeners, adoption counselors,
• organize a mobile outreach program with your local pet food store or at a mall

If you can’t physically volunteer think about administrative help,

• web design & support,
• manage the Petfinder account for the shelter.
• Write some nice bios for the animals.
• grant writers,
• event planners,
• fund-raising

Donations:
See what your particular shelter needs most. Talk to other volunteers or staff.
Often it’s bedding, paper.
The dogs often sleep on concrete floors with no bedding at all. It’s too expensive to maintain to clean.
There are beds that are easy to spray and clean with disinfectants that are off the floor and give the dog a little comfort.
The noise level at these places is another issue. If someone can come up with a design that is economical yet somewhat sound buffering, these places wouldn’t be so incredible stressful for the animals.

Local animal rescues and small shelters:
There are so many small rescues that are pulling death row animals from the municipal shelters and are trying their hardest to find them new homes.
They are in dire need of
foster homes (long and short term) especially for little kittens under 3-4 weeks that need to be bottle fed!!
transport,
outreach volunteers (just a few hours every other weekend to present the animals to the public and help adopt them and recruit new volunteers) It’s a truly rewarding fun activity on weekends.
I personally did this for 3 years every single weekend, on top of rescuing, fostering and volunteer coordination and my paying job

Virtual shelters/rescues such as Let’s Adopt!

We are a new phenomena thanks to social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Our networks stretch across the globe with growing outlets in the US, Canada, France, Germany and Austria, Bulgaria, Japan, Thailand, Turkey and more to come.
We need volunteers in each country, Especially foster homes in Turkey, Germany, Austria and France, but also in the US and Canada for you our local rescues.
We also need volunteers to help us transport adopted animals via airplane. There’s no cost involved for the volunteer and all the paperwork is handled by Let’s Adopt!
Let’s Adopt! is a 100% volunteer run organization and we pay for everything out of pocket, with no public funding and no adoption fees, we rely on our volunteer force and contributors to help us make each adoption a success. Most of Let’s Adopt!’s rescues are special needs animals which came from the streets, abusive situations, have been brutalized by humans, often with horrendous injuries.
We are determined to save those and give them a new lease on life with the best home out there.
Adopting one of our animals is not mercy – it’s a privilege.
If you’re interested in fostering for us. Please find the network closest to your location on the right side of this page and contact the administrator. If you’re in the US, send me an e-mail to misha@myletsadopt.com.
You can also support our work from far away by contributing to our Simba Fund. All proceeds fund the care of our special needs animals.

Larger shelters such as the SPCA / Humane Society

are usually already well off with volunteers and donations.
I must say that I have a love/hate relationship with them for various reasons.
They present themselves as no-kill but in 99% of all shelters are not!
It is a big number game with these organizations.
You are NOT a no-kill shelter when you have a selected variety of animals you accept and those you won’t.
The ones they won’t accept are as follows:
kittens under the age of 3-4 weeks, considered bottle feeders. They will either be denied or accepted and euthanized.
kittens that have a simple cold (URI), same fate as bottle feeders.
SPCA and the Humane Society are often very selective IF they are pulling any animals from the municipal “shelters”.

yorkshire terrier preparing to search for prey..

No “aggressive breeds” like Yorkshire terriers or Chihuahuas …just kidding - those they will take because there’s a market for toy breeds, but pit bulls or rottweilers, no matter how sweet and well behaved…not so much.
That’s my beef with them, and if you work, volunteer for one of them, good for you. They need you. Just ask your shelter director why there’s no neonatal program in place when there are very responsible and knowledgeable volunteers available. Why are we shipping in loads of chihuahua pups from a puppy mill in the Midwest (with all the media outlets waiting for the trucks to pull in to the parking lot), when there are chihuahuas sitting in the local shelter?
Could it be that those “fresh” puppy mill dogs will bring in between $200 and $300 a pop?

puppy mill dogs are still big profit - even after they've been rescued

If you still would like to volunteer for such an organization check your local resources for the nearest SPCA/HS.

Those little rescues I mentioned earlier are the true no-kill warriors out there that do the deed for the shelters.
HSUS and SPCA are notorious for sucking the small donor pool dry with their ability of pumping hundreds of thousands of $$ of YOUR donations into marketing efforts.

Thanks for caring, and please don’t hesitate to sign up as a volunteer.

If you start for one shelter or rescue and you don’t feel comfortable, try another. It’s completely normal. Animal rescue is not a “one size fits all” sort of thing.
I have been a volunteer, director, kitten wrangler, mentor for over 16 years and with all the ups and downs wouldn’t want to miss any of my experiences, the friends I’ve made along the way and the many, many souls I encountered, that repaid me with purrs and kisses.

Little foster Meg White gives kiiiiiisses

Priceless….

BE The Change

~Misha