DSPCA
For my community service a did a week in the DSPCA animal shelter, the DSPCA offers shelter and care to a wide variety of animals including, dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, goats, cows, pigs, rabbits, ferrets, gerbils, budgies, snakes, terrapins and all kinds of farmyard animals.
I was excited going to my first day of work because I love all animals and I admire what the DSPCA do for them. There were 12 girls from different schools doing work experience with me. We were all put in different places to help out such as the rehab centre, but I was very happy to be put with the dogs. Five other girls and I were all taught how to walk the dogs properly with the right sized harness and lead for each dog. Our first job was to walk every dog and make sure we had ticked their name off on the walking list, there were about 24 dogs in the shelter, but sadly we could not walk them all as it wasn’t safe for us or the other dogs, but the dogs that we couldn’t walk were walked by staff. Our next job was to feed all of the dogs which we were happy to do and got through it very quickly, we also got to bring all of the puppies out for a play as they are too small to be walked.
Our schedule was pretty much the same throughout the week, but sometimes we’d bring the dogs to the vet and we also got the privilege of bringing the adopted dogs to their owners, it was so nice to see both the owners and dogs so happy. It was a long day from 8:45am - 4:00pm, but I was happy to be there. It was inevitable that I would be obsessed with all of the dogs, but there was one in particular that I really fell in love with, his name was Marley and he was a 9 year old chocolate Labrador, I begged my parents to adopt him but sadly they said we couldn’t because my Dad is allergic, it was really emotional leaving all of the dogs on the last day (especially Marely) as you just want them all to be adopted and go to a nice home. We had heard some terrible stories about some of the dogs that were there and all of our hearts went out to them, we asked if there was anything we could do to promote the dogs getting adopted, and we were told to try to use the hashtag adoptdontshop on as many social media posts as we could, to stop people from buying dogs online from people who were illegally breeding dogs.
Although it was very hard to leave the DSPCA and all of the dogs, I follow them on their instagram account, a huge bunch of dogs (including Marley) have been adopted since I finished doing my work experience there. I would really recommend doing work there as I learnt a lot and really enjoyed it.
I was excited going to my first day of work because I love all animals and I admire what the DSPCA do for them. There were 12 girls from different schools doing work experience with me. We were all put in different places to help out such as the rehab centre, but I was very happy to be put with the dogs. Five other girls and I were all taught how to walk the dogs properly with the right sized harness and lead for each dog. Our first job was to walk every dog and make sure we had ticked their name off on the walking list, there were about 24 dogs in the shelter, but sadly we could not walk them all as it wasn’t safe for us or the other dogs, but the dogs that we couldn’t walk were walked by staff. Our next job was to feed all of the dogs which we were happy to do and got through it very quickly, we also got to bring all of the puppies out for a play as they are too small to be walked.
Our schedule was pretty much the same throughout the week, but sometimes we’d bring the dogs to the vet and we also got the privilege of bringing the adopted dogs to their owners, it was so nice to see both the owners and dogs so happy. It was a long day from 8:45am - 4:00pm, but I was happy to be there. It was inevitable that I would be obsessed with all of the dogs, but there was one in particular that I really fell in love with, his name was Marley and he was a 9 year old chocolate Labrador, I begged my parents to adopt him but sadly they said we couldn’t because my Dad is allergic, it was really emotional leaving all of the dogs on the last day (especially Marely) as you just want them all to be adopted and go to a nice home. We had heard some terrible stories about some of the dogs that were there and all of our hearts went out to them, we asked if there was anything we could do to promote the dogs getting adopted, and we were told to try to use the hashtag adoptdontshop on as many social media posts as we could, to stop people from buying dogs online from people who were illegally breeding dogs.
Although it was very hard to leave the DSPCA and all of the dogs, I follow them on their instagram account, a huge bunch of dogs (including Marley) have been adopted since I finished doing my work experience there. I would really recommend doing work there as I learnt a lot and really enjoyed it.