Book-Of-The-Day from SillyBooks

Volunteering at a Pet Shelter
By Kevin
Age14
Dallas, Texas

I am spending six weeks with my grandma helping homeless cats and dogs. Volunteering at a pet shelter is a lot of fun.

Every day we get up at 6 am to take care of animals. At the shelter, all the dogs and cats are barking and meowing because they are hungry. My grandma cleans dog kennels while I clean cat cages. I take each cat or group of kittens out of their cage and put them into a crate while I change the paper, bleach the litter box, and put clean soft beds, toys, and fresh food and water in their cage.

We feed the dogs dry food mixed with canned food. We have about 30 to 35 bowls to fill. It doesn’t take as long to fill that many bowls as it would seem. In each bowl, I put canned food and mix a little water with it to make it like gravy and my grandma stirs in the dry food. After the dogs eat, we let them out in groups to play under the blue sky with the wind blowing through their hair. Some of the dogs like to splash and play with each other in the kiddie pool that was donated by some nice people. When they come in from playing outside they always find a treat and a toy waiting for them in their kennel.

Some of the animals have to take medicine. They don’t like it at all but we know they will be thankful when they get better. If they have coccidia, which makes them weak and skinny, we give them a white liquid called Baycox. If they have ringworm we have to wash them in a very stinky yellow dip and then spot treat with cream. A Border Collie that I named Tiffany was hit by a car. Her leg was cut to the muscle. Every day, we give her antibiotic pills stuffed in a meatball and do hydrotherapy on her leg. After it dries we put a healing cream on it called Animax. After about 2 weeks, she is getting a lot better and is wagging her tail and giving us kisses.

When new animals come in, we have to process them after the veterinarian examines them. That means bathing them, weighing them, giving them shots, heartworm preventative, flea preventative, and wormer. Then I fix them a cage with a soft bed, food and water, a toy and a treat.

One day a dog came in because the owners said they couldn’t afford grooming anymore. The dog whined and cried for his owners for days, so I held him, talked softly to him and gave him belly rubs. It made him feel better but I wish the owners would have tried harder to keep that dog. Maybe they could have bathed the dog and cut his hair with scissors themselves.

Every day after we get the animals cared for, we have to scoop the yards, wash all the bowls and beds and sweep and mop the floors with bleach water. Then we go up front to get more food and supplies.

We have a whole lot of work to do but there is also time for a whole lot of fun! We play fetch with a little brown terrier named Dewey. His favorite toy is a round, bright colored ball with little knobby things on it. We taught William how to jump up on a dog house. He learned by himself how to open doors.

I like playing with a black kitten named Allen and a white and black kitten named Ashton. They have a toy stick with streamers and plastic fish attached and they jump very high to catch it when I swing it back and forth for them.

My favorite kitten is a Siamese named Chino but I like to call him ‘Cappu-chino.’ I like the way he purrs and the way he jumps up on my shoulder and wraps his arms around my neck like he’s giving me a hug. When I walk away from him he reaches out to me and meows like he is asking me to come back and play some more. He also gives hand shakes. If he gets adopted I will be happy for him but I will miss his little smiling meow and the way he reaches out for me.

Sometimes nice people who have adopted animals bring us treats like cake, pie, and ice cream. That’s always good!

I love helping animals at the shelter but I hate seeing them come in with diseases and wounds. I wish everyone would keep their pets inside or in a fence so they don’t roam around and catch diseases or get hit by a car. I wish everyone would take good care of their pets so they don’t get sick from worms or anaemic from fleas. I wish everyone would spay or neuter their pets because just one dog can have 10 puppies and those 10 puppies can each have 10 puppies and that equals 100 homeless puppies!

I love volunteering at the shelter and when I get older, I’d like to work there.

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