Contributing to Animal Shelters

Our shelter does not put ads on craigslist because around here craigslist for pets is not that great, the people want free animals and for unknown reasons. There are rules at the shelter for ads on those sort of sites.

I am trying to get my shelter to ask for people to sponsor pets, such as paying for a neuter or spay, a real vet check up. Some of our dogs need it.

Did you check to see if your shelter is on Petfinder? that is more suited for shelter animals instead of craigslist.

If you want to make sure your money is used at the shelter in the way you want then you need to do some research on what the shelter needs, and doesn't use. Such as retractable leashes, people donate them to us and we end up throwing or giving them away because we can't have dogs on the grounds have that much freedom. Steel dishes are better than plastic or ceramic because they break or get chewed up. Paper towels, laundry soap, dish soap, and toilet paper will always be used. Even shredded paper is nice to donate. Free for you and nice for us.

Maybe they aren't great like you said but I don't blame them for not posting on craigslist. Posting there attracts some "interesting" people :lol:. They probably would not take you on as a trainer because you lack credentials and they don't know you. How did you contact them? Do you have any smaller rescues in the area (not physical shelters)? I find it weird that no one would want a volunteer, how strange!

Anyway, I donate when I can (usually once a month or so) but another great way to help out is by fostering . Vet care and other basics are often covered by the rescue although some ask that you provide food (not ours but I sometimes end up switching dogs to raw diets). Fostering often literally saves lives...all of the dogs I've fostered were on death row.

Plus, it's a lot of fun! Challenging for sure but fun in that you get to "try" all sorts of breeds. It's very rewarding to see the dogs go from being sick/having behavioral problems to becoming healthy, great pets. I foster rabbits on occasion, too, and it's so awesome when you get to see a foster bunny do their first binky .

I'd love to foster but I live in an apartment, and we have pet rules.

And about the training, they mentioned just having someone to train with them, like training to sit and stuff, nothing fancy, to help make them more adoptable.

And I take back the craigslist thing - I could see how that would be a problem, and you who are in the know with shelters would know best.

But yeah about the volunteer thing - until they start at least checking their email or responding with a no if the answer is no, I am hesitant to donate money, but it's not shelter specific. Any non-profit organization wanting a donation sort of has to prove it for me. The only one I'll donate to is Red Cross, because they are ancient and they manage to get a lot of real work done. Everyone else I just don't know enough about. And recently with the animal organizations, after PETA euthanized somewhere in the 80%-90% range - I just lost faith completely with animal organizations. I feel like more can be done. People aren't paying hundreds of dollars on family pets because they don't like shelter dogs. It's because it might as well be invisible. When I was shopping for my dog, the first place I looked was the shelter websites, shelter apps (and unfortunately I did not know about petfinder, which is totally awesome) and eventually I decided to just go with a Papillon breeder. That shouldn't have happened if adoptable Papillons were available, which I found out many months later, they were. I actually spent about $400 and I drove to another state to pick her up. It would be much more convenient to meet the dog living near me and not pay that amount of money - so the shelters have a lot going for them. I just wish they would get the word out. And until they do, I just can't donate. I would love to volunteer and help them reach that audience. But I guess they feel they are doing well.

Some shelters just simply do not know how to improve their services. We have the government shelters (humane services) SPCA and non-profit small groups doing their best to advertise to always adopt or at least consider it. I think other than the French Mastiff that Matt wants so bad I would only adopt a "used" dog Same with cats.
About craigslist ads attracting some interesting people, well if there was a volunteer whose job it was to filter through these than it would be more efficient. I'll dig up an ad for our small animal rescue. They screen potential adopters- and starting with email. It really helps if someone is interested in a rabbit and they request to adopt it in a badly worded, ill grammered email which would garner an immediate decline from the rescue. Also, another one is classifieds. We have a weekly magazine called the "Buy and Sell" which posts thousands of free ads weekly. There is a section in there for pets and the rescue fills the page with ads about responsible ownership, whether it falls on deaf ears or not is no longer up to the rescue at that point. They try their best.



http://stjohns.kijiji.ca/c-pets-oth...rd-and-Small-Animal-Rescue-W0QQAdIdZ287281699 This is just one ad a foster mom put up.
http://stjohns.kijiji.ca/c-pets-other-pets-for-sale-The-Bird-Small-Animal-Rescue-W0QQAdIdZ299662612