On September 27, 2014, a group of honors students and I traveled to the Atlantic County Animal Shelter to provide our volunteer services. My friend Lauren and I both drove our cars to the shelter, transporting our other honors friends with us, and arrived Saturday morning at around 9 am. I had never volunteered at an animal shelter before, despite my love of animals, so I didn’t really have an understanding of what I would be getting myself into, but my experience there has been my favorite one yet.
As we walked into the shelter, there was a small group of other honors students all filling out the proper paperwork that the shelter required before getting to work, so we joined them. After signing off on the papers, we all got assigned to different jobs. I, along with two other friends (Matt and Drew), volunteered to clean the main floor. First, Matt and I took to sweeping – he used the broom and I held the dustpan, and I must say, our little team worked rather efficiently. After we swept an area, Drew would come follow-up with a good mopping. Once that was all done, I went over the whole floor with the vacuum, while Matt helped out by holding the extremely long power cord for me.
We finished cleaning pretty quickly, so my cleaning crew of three joined Lauren and Josh, who were taking care of the sick kittens in a separate room. Here came the easy job of holding the little kittens while their cages were getting cleaned out – that’s how I found out that there’s probably nothing cuter than a kitten sneezing. After a while of helping out in that room, my sinuses began to act up and my throat started getting itchy, so I figured some cat allergies were rearing their ugly symptoms. Once I started sneezing, I decided it’d be a good idea to get out of that room (my sneezing is a lot less cute than a kitten’s).
Next came the best part, the highest reward for our volunteering services: playing with the dogs! I am a dog lover, no doubts about it. Since I have my own dog at home and don’t get to see him everyday, seeing all these excited dogs and puppies tugged at my heartstrings. I can honestly admit that I tried my hardest to pet all of those dogs as well as I could through the chain link fence that separated us. Luckily, some of the dogs were put outside in a small fenced-in play area, so there were a few energetic ones we could freely pet and have a good time with.
Leaving the shelter was bittersweet in that I loved seeing all the animals and doing a good service for their caretakers, but I also saw so many dogs that I would have adopted in a heartbeat. I can only hope that they all get good homes. Thanks to my experience here, when I am in the position to have my own pet, I know it will be a shelter animal. All in all, it was extremely rewarding to work at the shelter, and I hope I get the chance to do more service work there in the future.