A DAYS VOLUNTEERING AT BIRMINGHAM DOGS HOME
This quarter, some of the team at eNL Legal Recruitment will be volunteering a day of their time at Birmingham Dogs Home. This hugely important charity primarily ensures that the abandoned dogs coming into their care are rescued from their plight, reunited with owners who may have lost them or rehomed to families that will respect and nurture them. Their vision is a world where every dog is a loved dog in a happy home. And their mission is to rescue, reunite and re-home the lost, abused and abandoned dogs from the streets of the West Midlands and South Staffordshire.
To find out more please click here to visit their website.
This week eNL’s star volunteers at the dogs home were Kaye Thumpston, Louise Evans and Melanie Daly and they were certainly put to good use with many duties to carry out alongside having some fun with all the wonderful dogs who are currently at the home. Louise Evans has put together some words below to give you an insight into the day and what the whole experience was like.
Volunteering at Birmingham Dogs Home – In the words of Louise Evans
“I consider myself extremely lucky working for a company that pro-actively encourages and arranges corporate volunteering and this week my two colleagues and I were lucky enough to be able to volunteer for the day at Birmingham Dogs Home. Being a huge dog lover I was extremely excited to go and cuddle, walk and play with lots of cute dogs of all sizes.
On arrival we soon discovered that volunteering at a Dogs home is most definitely not the most glamorous work, fortunately we had been instructed to take wellies and waterproofs (both of which I had to make a rush job to purchase / borrow the night before). We were split into separate blocks each containing 26 kennels with an indoor space and outdoor space for the dogs. I was pleasantly surprised, since I had always imagined animal shelters to be very sad looking animals caged inside too small spaces or behind bars as if in a prison. The kennels here are all very well lit, with underfloor heating, access to an outdoor space, more toys than I thought imaginable and big beds with lots of blankets.
The staff work extremely hard to keep the kennels in this condition and we discovered this on arrival when we found ourselves very actively involved in mucking out each indoor kennel space. This involved removing all bedding, toys, excrement (yes POOP – and as I discovered the bigger the dog, yes, the bigger the mess), sterilising each kennel individually, hosing down the contents, blading the water off all windows doors and floors and then replenishing each kennel with fresh contents. You then move onto the remainder of the indoor space and then let the dogs back in and move outdoors to repeat again on each outdoor space.
At this point, I was tired, I ached, I had still only really seen any dogs through windows and couldn’t for the life of me understand why I made the decision to wash my hair that morning rather than when I went home. However, with our help the staff were able to finish these tasks earlier than they normally would and we were able to move onto the dog walking rotas after a quick break to rehydrate. I was lucky enough to be paired with an experienced staff member who was happy to take all of the bigger dogs out with me. This is the part of the day that made me forget all about the morning’s work and the smell of dog poop.
We took each dog out individually to a large paddock / field with heaps of toys and apparatus for them to clamber and play on (and water!) here you can play tug of war, throw toys and (for those that like to be cuddled and fussed) have all the cuddles with each dog you take out. When you have spent a generous amount of time playing and bonding you then get to walk each dog around a very large field before they go back to their kennel.
I met Storm, a beautiful loving Rottweiler, Violet, an equally gorgeous lab cross, Ruby, the bounciest, tiniest Staffordshire Bull-terrier I’ve ever experienced, Patch, an extremely energetic and loving Staffordshire Bull-terrier cross, Doris an older but equally as loving Staffordshire Bull-terrier, and last but not least, Carl, a huge mastiff cross who completely stole my heart with his eager, energetic playful and loving antics – if there was anyway humanly possible I would have reserved him for adoption before I left the centre.
Overall the whole day was probably the most emotionally rewarding, if physically exhausting days I’ve ever had and I can honestly, hand on heart say that, I will most definitely be volunteering again in my own time. The staff are simply amazing and I would encourage anybody to at the very least donate to their local Dogs Home (from toys, blankets, food or a donation via the website) but I will urge people even more to adopt not shop!”
With no Government funding, the Birmingham Dogs Home survive purely through the generous contributions of the general public, companies, groups, organisations and kind-hearted individuals who may or may not have purchased dogs from them and have remembered this charity in their wills.
Keep a look out for the next update and more lovely pictures of the amazing dogs at the home in July when a further 3 members from eNL Legal team will be volunteering for the day.
Want to get involved?
There are many ways you can get involved with this charity to find out more please click here.
To see a list of dog that are currently in need of a new home please click here.
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