Professional Assistance Volunteers Do you have a special skill you would like to share with HSDC? If so, please let us know. We would gladly welcome any professional assistance in the areas listed below. • Legal Advising • Fundraising • Marketing • Grant Writing • Anything else you think could be of help to HSDC   Our Animals and Staff have been Waiting for You When you visit our shelter, do you make a bee line straight for the dog adoption floor? Or do you head immediately to the cat or kitten room? Can you feel the energy in the room when our happy dogs start "yipping" and "woofing" in pure joy of simply seeing you? When you walk in the cat or kitten room, does it make you feel good to be close to so many beautiful cats waiting for you to pet them? If so, then you're the type of individual we look for to volunteer! We need cat socializers, dog walkers, people to just spend time with our animals (maybe reading), people to help the staff with their tasks and so much more! Much of our work needs to be done at the shelter, but many volunteer tasks can be done in your own home or neighborhood. We need people to help us at the front desk, take dogs to off-site adoption events, answer the phones, do some fundraising. Cleaners are difficult to find, but we keep looking! Did you know that we are supported financially only by donations? We receive no government funds, so volunteers are essential to us being able to fulfill our mission. To begin, you will need to attend an information session, which are held the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month at 11:30 am and last about an hour. At these sessions, we will tell you how you can best help our animals and us. Our Behavior Wellness Coordinator requests that you help our dogs be calm! Calm dogs get adopted much faster than those who show their excitement by jumping up and down when they see you. In the cat room, the cats that approach people because our great cat socializers have gotten them craving human contact get adopted much faster than the scared cats who hide in corners. We will describe exactly what you can do to help us help our animals. It is all of us working together that will be best for our animals. We are grateful that so many children under the age of 16 in Delaware County (and beyond!) want to help us with our animals. The most helpful volunteer activity a child can do is sign up to participate in our "READING TO THE ANIMALS" program. Many of our adoptive families have children and if our animals are not accustomed to children, we cannot tell them that our animals are good with children. With parental help to assist children in understanding how important this is and why, children will have a much better volunteer experience than walking a dog who has no leash skills...yet! To sign up for our Reading to the Animals program, please go to www.signupgenius.com and when prompted, enter our volunteer email address: volunteerhsdc@hotmail.com. If you are a drop-in volunteer, our staff says their favorite sentence is, "What can I do to help you today?" Even as a drop-in volunteer, you can fill out the exercise sheet on each dog's kennel so that other volunteers know that dog has been walked or exercised for the specified time. That way we are assured every dog has gotten his or her fair share of time out of their kennel. However, we strongly encourage you to consider being more than a drop-in volunteer! You will have more fun and a better volunteer experience knowing the animals and our staff if you visit weekly or bi-monthly. Our staff are great people! You will feel better about your contribution as you learn what needs to be done and go about doing it with minimal supervision. If you elect to be a "regular volunteer", we will ask you to fill out an application so we can get to know you better. As a regular volunteer, other training opportunities lead by our Behavior Wellness Coordinator will become available to you. At the information sessions, you will be given ideas how to help us from your own home or neighborhood. We are open to your ideas also! If you have any special skills you wish to offer us, please share them with the volunteer coordinator who will be talking with you individually after the information session and site tour is completed. Please understand that we are trying to help you know how you can be most helpful to us, but it is a partnership we hope to establish with you, so let's start now! See you at an information session soon!   If you're interested in joining our volunteer task force, please contact us at (740) 369-7387 or send an email to volunteerhsdc@hotmail.com to schedule yourself for an information session. Thank you so much for your willingness to donate your time and energy to our animals and HSDC. We truly appreciate it! Join our facebook page and stay up-to-date on what’s happening at HSDC! (You’ll be asked to log in, then we invite you to send us a friend request! Use your phone to receive alerts about new participation programs. It’s quick and easy. Click to see how!