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Currently, more than 100,000 animals are abandoned every year and the percentage of homeless animals is increasing more and more. It means that hundreds of animals are abandoned each day. The main reason is that many people desert their pets is due to their curiosity in raising cute puppies without realizing and thinking about the hard work that goes with raising a living creature. Because these people do not think much about one precious life, there are lots of dogs that have indelible scars living in dog shelters. To help these dogs, I did volunteer work for abandoned dogs and found how hard it is to raise a pet.
1. Things to do
I went to a dog shelter in which 180 dogs were protected. Small and medium sized dogs shared rooms and there were large sized dogs in other spaces. Usually, large dogs have their own room and about 20 small and medium-sized dogs shared one room. Arriving at the place, we changed into comfortable clothes and settled in to start volunteering. The first step was cleaning. I cleaned up the dogs’ waste and their hair, combed the puppies and dusted the blankets laid down for old or sick dogs. Then I swept the floor with a dustpan rubbed with a rolling pin. After that, I filled the food and water for them, going room by room because the shelter managers leave food outside all day. Next, I went to the mountain near the shelter with a dog and took a walk for about half an hour. Volunteers could walk with one dog each. So, some dogs, which wanted to go out but couldn’t, barked at me to be taken. I felt that they really needed a lot of help. These are about what I did in shelter. But you don’t have to worry too much about the shelter team because the roles are naturally divided by teams like cleaning team or taking a walk team.
2. Atmosphere and feeling
You can get distracted almost immediately after you go inside. This is because almost all the dogs there bark whenever they see a human, so it is really noisy. They bark out to welcome or to warn people. There are various types of dogs. Most of them like people and are charming. I couldn’t understand why these cute dogs with pure souls were here. However, some dogs avoided people and even ran away. I think it was because they have memories about people abandoning them. Beyond that, there were dogs that bit people to get attention, or dogs that did not care about people at all. The hardest thing was when I cut firewood and carried it to places. I used a lot of energy at that time. Plus, I had to keep wearing my mask because of the stinking odor of excrement.
3. Cautions and recommendations
You should bring your comfortable clothes for volunteer work because clothes can get dirty. As mentioned earlier, taking a mask and a pair of cotton work gloves is essential because you can be poked by wood branches when chopping firewood. Finally, if you are truly responsible for animals, I urge you to adopt puppies from the shelters instead of paying money for them to be adopted into other places.
I still can’t forget their pure, clear but hurt eyes even though it’s been a few days after volunteering. If you do volunteer work for more than the appointed hours at the certified dog protection center, you can get the benefit of earning some community service hours. Other than volunteering, there are donation systems not only for money, but also food or blankets, or snacks in many shelters, so I hope you can participate in any way possible. No one has right to treat animals as they like, of course. The dogs in shelters are still missing and waiting for their owners.
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