Volunteer
I love dogs and cats and native plants. As much as possible, I choose to spend all day, every day, involved with animals and nature. I got started in these pursuits by volunteering. I am a Native Plant Steward for my local park, and I have been since about 2000, I think. I received training from the Washington Native Plant Society. Trees I planted are 30 or 40 feet tall now. I have invested thousands of hours restoring habitat. I would like to volunteer more time, but work gets in the way. In 2008, Kelsy and I started volunteering for Missing Pet Partnership. In 2013, we started a new nonprofit to help stray dogs with no known owner, Useless Bay Sanctuary. I probably volunteer at least a thousand hours a year for UBS. Being a volunteer has allowed me to do the things I love, including working with Wakomu and Valentino, my search dogs, which we do as a paid service under Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue. Everything good in my life originated in volunteering. In fact, I wouldn’t even have Tino and Mu if not for my volunteer involvement. I met Mu because of MPP, and I rescued Tino’s mom because of UBS. I’m not really a huge fan of Homo sapiens, as a species. Ask anyone. The problems I’m working to solve were created by humans. But the people I do like to spend time with are volunteers.
I recommend volunteering because it’s a great way to get involved in something you can be passionate about. However, volunteers are needed because we face overwhelming problems that pure capitalism has no interest in solving. Habitat loss and missing pets are two issues that I’m not even making a dent in. As I have been devoting all of my time and energy in trying to be a part of the solution, these problems have only gotten worse. Regarding native plants and habitat restoration, I have spent decades battling invasive species in a park near my home. I recently visited a beautiful forest full of native species, with no invasive species, and acreage many times the size of my little park. It is a perfect ecosystem, and it is what I dream of achieving if I ever manage to complete the habitat restoration in my local park. This perfect forest is scheduled to be bulldozed, an entire ecosystem decimated by capitalism. I have been working 60 to 100 hours a week, mostly as a volunteer, for 15 years, to help solve the problem of missing pets. I receive several calls a day from people who mistakenly think we are a shelter, due to a mis-categorization by Google, from people who need to surrender their pets right away because they are losing their homes or needing to move. The shelters are overflowing. In all the time I have been preaching about loss prevention for cats and dogs, more pets are missing or homeless than ever before. I understand I’m fighting a losing battle, but being on the right side is better than being on the winning side, in my experience.
If you have ever lost your cat or your dog, then you must know that the search for a lost pet necessarily involves hundreds of hours of volunteer effort from family and friends, and also from complete strangers who just want to help. I lost my own dog, Viktor, and in the 7 days he was missing, volunteers contributed at least 200 hours of assistance, added to the 80 I spent tracking him down during that week. Not everyone is so lucky to have a support system than can generate 200 volunteer hours for the search for a lost cat or dog. I know many people are desperate for help, and not getting it.
I wish I had an army of volunteers. We already do benefit from working with so many great volunteers who are doing the best they can. Some contribute a few hours each week, and some dedicated people are working as many as 100 hours each week as volunteers. If you are able to help out, here are some of the ways you can chip in:
—Cats needed! Mu and Tino are both highly trained, but we continue to go to training every week, to sharpen our skills and as a reward for the dogs. We train with Max and Haas and Layla, and Raphael, and Beba and Anna, and Rex. For these training sessions, we need a volunteer cat. Currently, we use Jinx most of the time. Raphael lives with Jinx, and he has found her too many times in training. He is starting to think his job is to find Jinx, rather than finding cats in general. We need new cats so that Raphael and Mu and Max and Rex can have a variety of cats to find. The volunteer cat is in a carrier at all times, and always safe. The ideal volunteer cat would like to wait quietly in a cat carrier and watch the world go by while waiting for the search dogs to come and find her. We train on Sundays, usually at a park or school in the area from Everett to Bellevue to Issaquah. If you have a cat that could volunteer once a month, that would be very helpful.
—Dogs needed! Our training group needs more and different dogs to find. Of course, we can have the search dogs find each other, and they often do. It helps to have a new dog as often as we can get one. We gather on Sundays to train in local parks. It would be very helpful to have volunteer dogs that could be found during the week. You can do this near your home. We want to set up searches that mimic the conditions of an actual search for a lost dog. When we gather for training on Sundays, it’s a dog party, and all the dogs go crazy, which is fun. However, we need to set up training sessions that are more similar to actual searches. Mainly, this means finding new dogs that the search dogs haven’t found before. If you could take your dog for a walk, perhaps for a mile or two, in a big loop, and then be found by one of the search dogs, this would be a big help to us. If you can use an app like AllTrails, that would be an added bonus. Your dog would be with you at all times, on leash, and safe. Tino, Layla, Max, and Haas would like to arrange these types of practice searches at various times during the week.
Useless Bay Sanctuary needs volunteers, such as fosters, UBS 1st Responders, and other types of assistance. UBS could help more dogs if we had foster homes to put them in. When I see a dog in need, one of my first questions is, where will I take this dog if I catch him? Of course, we hope we are able to reunite a dog with the owner, but that doesn’t always work out. The shelters are full. They will take in strays, but sometimes by appointment only. If we knew in advance that a foster home was standing by, it would allow us to plan ahead, and have less anxiety about what we will do with a dog. All of our current fosters are full. UBS 1st Responders help with dogs like Tino and Raphael. Raphi was reported at a hiking trail, along with his three brothers. UBS volunteers spent three days catching all of the puppies safely. Tino’s mom was reported wandering in the mountains. Because I was able to respond with a humane trap, I got her to safety quickly so she could have her puppy in a safe environment. It seems like every day I see a dog that needs help from UBS, but I’m often tied up on another case. We can train you on the basic steps you can take to help a lost dog, and we supply the equipment.
Lost Dogs of King County is a Facebook group with 40,000 members. About 30 dogs are reported lost or stray every day. There will usually be a lost dog in your area. You can help with posters and fliers, and physically searching your area. You can also help by making a report if you see a dog that might be lost. LDKC has a web page with lots of advice on how to help a lost dog.
Your local shelter would probably be very happy if you could help out with walking dogs or cleaning cages. They also need qualified foster homes, to ease the crowding at the shelters.
Loss Prevention is another way you can help. Keep your own dogs and cats safe, and spread the word with family and friends, so they know these easy and inexpensive ways to prevent their own dogs and cats from going missing.
Please share this newsletter with someone who loves animals. A great way for volunteers to help these causes is by finding more volunteers.
Everyone can do something. If you would like details on how to volunteer, please comment below, or contact me at UselessBaySanctuary@gmail.com, or Jim@3retrievers.com.
Please volunteer. You just might meet your new best friend.