Ok Saturday was by no means my first day but since I've been volunteering since I was 14 (I'm 17 now) there are too many days to recount so I'm just starting with this last time I was there.
The Georgia SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is a non-profit animal rescue group. They do not euthanize animals.
The volunteer age limit is 16 at the moment and there are many volunteers every week. They take in only dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens. When they take in an animal, whether it's, Owner Surrender for whatever reason or we picked it up from an animals shelter that does euthanize we always keep those animals seperate from our other animals because they may be carrying something that would make the other animals sick. After enough time passes to ensure that they have no diseases they are brought to the main room for that type of animal.
There are now several rooms in the building. There is the main lobby which is where customers walk in and see the person who runs the front desk. This room also holds many cats and kittens which are not suitable to be in the Free Roam room. The Free Roam room, as the name suggests is a room where all the more social cats are put, and can move around as they wish within the room. There are many play areas for them to climb and sleep in, as well as four or five litter boxes and food and water pans.
The main dog room is where we put all the healthy dogs. This includes puppies that have already gone through isolation. When I was there saturday there were about 12 dogs in the main dog room. Only one small breed though. A chihuahua. The rest were either puppies that would grow to be large are large adolescent or adult dogs. I have a preferance for large breeds and love rough housing with them. My favorite dog at the moment (other than my own, who I got from the GASPCA) is Tex, a huge Siberian Husky mix. He's already been trained and he still has the rambunctiousness of a puppy since he is only 10 months old.
There are also both dog, and cat isolation, and a quarantine room for sick animals. There is a laundry room, a room for doing dishes. An entire building in the strip mall is used for storage (but is usually filled with things we don't always use), there is also a small second hand shop attached that is used to give is a little extra financial help. Also a few offices off the main building.
I am a bit allergic to cats and so don't spend as much time with them as with the dogs. So I don't know how many there are. I do have a favorite cat however. Her name is Opal. She is a long haired grey and black tabby. She has a bit of an attitude sometimes but she is still my favorite even though I have numerous scars from her. I believe she has a cateract and my theory just has to be proven by the resident vet-tech(the equivalent of a nurse for vets).
Anyway on to my day. I'm writing this 3 days after the fact so I may not have as a many details as I would like but it should still be fairly interesting(to those of you who care enough to read it).
I got in around 10:30 which is an hour and half after they open for staff and volunteers, so most things were already taken care of. Most people who are new to animals shelters say that the smell is the first thing they notice. I've been working there so long that I'm not even phased by it anymore. But walking in after they have already cleaned, there is a noticable improvement as to how it smells as opposed to walking in when there has been no one cleaning all night. So walking in I just said "hi" to the people I knew, or at least worked with, and then went to look for something to do.
The first thing I always try for is the dishes. We have a large industrial sink and so we can do many dishes at once. Sadly we do not have a dishwasher, so all dishes (including litter pans) must be washed by hand. Usually this is a very simple and easy job. Since all dishes have to soak for 10 minutes in a disinfectant solution containing Vercon(a powerful disinfectant) there usually isn't much gunk stuck on the dishes. All that has to be done to them is to scrub them with a brush or sponge, and rinse it down with hot water so there are no traces of anything on the dish. Then you dry the dish and put it where it goes. Very simple and easy. So simple it's usually a task given to the newest volunteers and community service workers. As it was that day.
So I went to do the laundry, which I did fast with only a small amount of crap getting on me. Many dogs and cats, especially young ones, have blankets or mats in the kennal with them. These inevitably get soiled and have to be taken out and cleaned. Towels are usually used to clean a kennal that isn't very dirty, or to dry off a wet animal. These also have to be cleaned, as well as cat and dogs beds. All of this means that we need, and have, 2 washers and 2 dryers. These are almost always running.
After washing the clothes I searched around for something else. I found several cages that needs to be cleaned and so I did. We open at 11 in the morning, so by that time we were open and there were several people looking at the animals. I helped a couple of them look at what they wanted.
I was starting to get hungry by12 and I ran to the resturaunt, situated on the other end of the strip mall from the Adoption Center. Of course it was my luck that very nice lady who ran the place had popped a tire and couldn't make it to work. This meant that I had to walk to the nearest resturaunt nearly a mile away. I went back and asked around to see if anyone else wanted to go. Keely, a volunteer I had met the previous Saturday, said that she was hungry and that she wouldn't mind walking to lunch with me. So we walked the mile up to subway and had a delicious meal there and then made the mile back. By then it was almost 1 in the afternoon and business was picking up at the Center.
Immediately after returning I noticed several people who were looking for dogs but had not been helped yet, so I did that. One was a family looking at a 3 months old husky mix named Eric. The other group was three collage girls looking at a 2 month old retriever puppy. Sadly Mom came and picked me up before I could see if either group was adopting.
Now I have things to look forward to when I go back this Saturday. I am going to check on Opal's eye. And on the two puppies that were being looked at, at the end of the day.
