Volunteer dog walkers fill need at animal shelter
Published: May 16, 2005
A retired wallpaper salesman, a quirky hairstylist and a group of special-education students have one thing in common, and their paths cross weekly at the Pima Animal Care Center.
All of them are volunteer dog walkers for the county-run shelter.
The center’s volunteer dog-walking program started last spring. About 50 volunteers dog walkers have been trained, and there currently are 20 who regularly walk dogs, said Jenny Kading, volunteer and outreach coordinator for the shelter.
Retired salesman John Thomas, 63, is at the center walking dogs most mornings.
“I have a love of dogs and cats, and I’m in a situation now where I can’t have them where I live. The first thing that came to mind was walking dogs,” Thomas said. “I always had dogs all my life, dogs and cats, but it’s very hard to walk a cat on a leash, although I’ve done it.”
Kading said the center is trying to keep dogs for longer periods of time before euthanizing them and to give the dogs a chance at adoption. However, being confined to indoor kennels that are frequently crowded can cause illness and create behavioral problems for the dogs.
“The longer they’re here, the better chance they will get sick or depressed and lose their social skills and be pulled off the adoption line,” said Kading, “so it’s important to get them out and keep them happy and healthy.”
Volunteer dog walker Signe Razzi, a hairstylist, agrees. But it’s sometimes hard go to the facility and see all of the dogs in need of homes, she said.
Pima Animal Care Center “is . . . a tough place. They’re so bare-bones where volunteers are concerned. It’s a labor of love because you get dirty and it’s very physical and it’s dogs that have been . . . dumped there,” she said.
Razzi’s mission is to recruit enough volunteer dog walkers so that all the dogs are walked regularly. She plans to develop a social and support group for volunteers.
“It can be really frustrating to drum up volunteers because people who like animals say, ‘I can’t do that. It would break my heart.’ Well, who’s going to do it, people who don’t like animals?” Razzi said.
In October, special-education teacher Dora Nice brought students from Sunnyside High School to Pima Animal Care on Friday mornings. Kading said teachers at several other high schools have contacted her about bringing their special-needs students to the center to be volunteer dog walkers.
Nice’s class walks dogs as a group. She works with students with varying degrees of mental retardation, and some have additional disabilities.
The program is, she said, “a chance for them to get out in the community, and interacting with animals seems to do such great things for these kids and at the same time it helps the animal-care place.”
“We have one little girl who’s not very verbal and what words she does say, it’s hard to understand,” Nice said. “As soon as we start heading down Silverbell (Road) she starts saying dog in Spanish - perro - and she gets very excited.”
“To me it’s a win-win situation,” Kading said. “The dogs get walked, and these guys get tons of benefits. They get love and exercise.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: