How to Support Animal Shelters

Animal shelters are priceless. Almost always volunteer-based and non-profit, they take care of disadvantaged animals. They invest a great amount of time, effort, energy and money into caring for them.

If you’re an animal lover, you’ve probably wondered how you could help them in their worthy work. Well, read on and learn how to support animal shelters!

How do animal shelters work?

Shelters find out about abandoned animals through the help of local residents. Usually people call or email the shelter to tell them about a missing or abandoned dog that was found somewhere.

When that happens, volunteers from the shelters spring to action and go to retrieve the lost or abandoned animal. Then the neighbor is asked to help by putting up posters in the area where they found the animal to see if the owners will appear.

Then, once in the shelter, the animal gets examined by a vet to make sure that everything is ok, and that they don’t need any medical care. However, newcomers will go through a period of between 12 to 18 days in which they will be separated from the other inhabitants of the shelter.

This is so that they can be vaccinated, dewormed and spayed or neutered. This period also gives shelter workers time to see what the animal’s personality is like before taking the risk of letting it live with other dogs or cats.

How you can support animal shelters

There are many different ways to support animal shelters; we’ll list them here:

• Call a shelter when you see an abandoned animal. It doesn’t matter if he has a collar or not, because if he has one, he may be lost. Try to keep him from leaving so that volunteers have time to arrive. If they ask you to hang posters or put an ad in newspapers or on the radio, agree to lend a hand. This will ease the workload and you will be doing a good deed.
• Donate food. So many animals live in these shelters, and they all must be fed. You may not want to donate money, but you can help by buying bags of food for dogs or cats, for any age. You could purchase food for puppies, adults, or elderly dogs. In the shelters there are animals of all kinds, so any kind will be welcome.
  
• Give money. Shelters need money for vets, vaccinations, food, toys, blankets, beds, feeders and a myriad of other items. Your money, no matter how small the contribution, can help these good-hearted people who dedicate a good part of their lives to helping these wonderful creatures. If you like, you can join them when they bring an animal to the vet or when they go to a pet store, and cover their expenses.

Do you have time to give?

• Time. Volunteering your time and labor is a great way to support animal shelters. People who run these kinds of shelter often do not receive any financial compensation. Maybe your schedule fits theirs and you can stay with the animals while the owners are at work elsewhere.
• Give them company. Animals not only need financial aid but also love and affection, especially if they have been abused or abandoned. Go visit them from time to time. Play with them, pamper them and give them affection. You can even take them out for a walk! It will be a great way to make the animals feel better and relieve the workload for those who care for them.
• Adopt. This is the primary way to help. If you have a chance to adopt an animal and give him love and affection, adopt him from one of these shelters. He will be grateful, and so will the volunteers who run the shelter.

Thank you for your good intentions and your help!