Saoirse, a Dognition Protodog, is looking for her forever home in the Washington D.C. area. Photo: Carol G./FOHA
Summer weather is here and that means college students are on break and families will be taking vacations. For many shelters, this means a dip in the number of people who volunteer. Step up and help your local shelter this summer! Dognition has compiled 10 ways that you can help:
Be Helpful From Home
You can help your local animal shelters without even leaving home!
1. Find your local animal adoption organizations on Facebook, and “like” their pages. Share the posts of the adoptable dogs as often as you can. This greatly increases the dogs’ visibility to the public and enhances the likelihood of these dogs getting adopted.
2. Having a celebration? In lieu of gifts, ask your guests to donate towels, toys, and other wish list items to your local shelter.
3. Foster or sponsor a dog!
Go pro bono
Take on your local animal shelter as a pro bono client, and you’ll be making a lot of tails wag!
4. If you are a dog trainer, the dogs would benefit from you teaching them basic commands, like sit, stay, and heel. The training will exercise their minds and help increase their chances of getting adopted!
5. Calling all lawyers! Help your local shelter by giving free legal advice to help shelters with legal forms and contracts.
6. Are you an accountant? Help the shelter staff keep organized and accurate records.
Put those skills to use
Let your skill set shine at your local animal shelter!
7. Grab your camera and go photograph the dogs! Show off the dogs’ personalities in photos, and share these photos far and wide. Written descriptions and updates about the dogs are also beneficial.
8. Are you a safe driver? Transport shelter dogs to vet appointments and to other rescue facilities.
9. As a volunteer, it’s hard to resist wanting to interact with the dogs. Yet a critical volunteer task is sanitizing the dog pens. Lend a cleanly hand and keep the dogs healthy!
Most importantly: let’s work together as a dog loving community to reduce the number of dogs that enter shelters. Protect your dog from being lost by microchipping and ID tagging your dog. As well, spaying and neutering your dog helps fight the overpopulation of homeless dogs.
Let’s help our shelters from being short staffed! Find a shelter near you.
Are you a dog shelter? Dognition has a Shelter Program! Write to us at shelter@dognition.com for more details.
