You never know you can, unless you try

How did I become a volunteer, some of you might be curious.

Never in my life had I thought about being a volunteer. Not until when i see cookie. After his incident, i start to think about volunteering, but im scare of the time commitment and i doubt my capability of handling dogs.

I think guanyinma really loves me, or maybe she love the dogs so much- at that point of time I happened to browse through facebook and saw a posting by SOSD: Try out session for potential VOLUNTEERS. zun or zun?

And so I thought: "by trying out means I can test water And have a better picture of how volunteering is like, and if its really not what I imagined to be , I can stop going right? hmmm. No loss"

and so I went on to register. the first try out session is on a saturday (21nd April 2012) and i was super looking forward to it.
I was all ready to leave on sat morning when it suddenly drizzled T_T.
Can u imagine my disappointment when Minghui (the in charge) whatsapp us to say the session is postponed to the next day as the dogs would prefer to walk in the sun than rain......

Sunday, I asked euguene along to the try out. The number of people who turn up was surprisingly, small.

Mistook Vivien for Minghui as Minghui was late *side stare*

What greeted me......
Luckily, our shelter dogs' conditions are a tad better...

 

Ok, and so Ming hui briefed us abut how we should handle dogs (we should never let the dogs walk ahead of us - must be beside or behind us), What to do incase a dog fight broke out ( if the dogs are on leash, try to pull them to an opposite direction and walk away, if plan fails, drop the leash and run for our lives hahahaha! yes thats what she said), When walking pass another person with a stranger dog, humans must always cross each other side by side not the dogs, when walking the dog on leashes and unwanted behaviour such as pulling etc we will have to correct the dog by pulling the leash up. Also, first contact with dogs, we should remain calm and not get excited if not the dogs will be more excited and pound on us.

We were then assigned a dog each and they are: Baby, sasha, tui, yen yen, twinkle and meimei to walk in the open car park.

Some clarification here. Pls ignore the SOSD furkids label pls.
And yenyen & Tui look so much slimmer last time.. WHAT HAPPENED DESPITE ALL THE WEEKLY PACK WALK??!!

i remembered walking baby. It was totally chaotic!!! so much energy and kept pulling me around and i have ZERO control. tsk. pack leader.
we rotated our dogs and the next dog was meimei. Awww if u have met her before, she is like the sweetest and calmest dog , definitely the easiest to walk. But! She too bullied me :(((((
It jus walked wherever she wants and again, no control T_T.
Minghui helped me along the way and asked me to imagine me walking with 20 dogs behind me like cesar millan. I was like : :O that can never happen -_-"
2nd task was to bath the dogs. And i totally enjoyed bathing them. Its so much more easier than walking them please!! And mongrels are so mch easier to bath than miumiu -.- cause I dont have to sit there and use hairdryer to dry them, and they dont hve long fur either. Good, good...

Still abit weary of them, geh siao put my hand on yenyen act close only. Actually im still scared.

 

 

The session ended after we bath them and left about 12pm?

The next week was another try out session. And haha, i went again.
Minghui was telling us that we have 3 types of volunteery work to choose:
1. casual (walk and bath dogs)
commitment level: low
2. Regular and rehab (handling dogs with behavior and aggression problem)
commitment level: high at least 3-4 times a month
3. Educational and advertising
( where we help to educate people or students and do marketing)

i opt for the first and third choice as im afraid that I couldnt commit as promised.

i ended up looking forward to every weekend and my attendance is by far 90%? i will turn up at least once a week unless im gg overseas or have family gathering that i cant skip.

With minghui's guidance, I was really learning hard on how to be a pack leader with the dogs. Every session is a learning session for me. And I really gained alot more of knowledge and self confidence along the way.

The tasks that I thought i would never be able to do like walking 2 dogs and slowly 3 dogs at the same time. i managed to do it because i was pushhedddddddd..
To enter the kennel without being pounced on (no touch no talk no eye contact) and to walk a dog with the right energy.. the list goes on.. should there be no minghui to push and encourage me, there will not be the me today who can do all the 'crazy' things that she assigned me. She loves to give me surprised which will make my heart pumped even faster. E.g on the 2/3rd session, she told me to enter a kennel to take some equipments. Not a normal kennel but a kennel full of shit.

Im not afraid to step on the shit. What im worried was the dogs would step on the shit and pounce on me and i will have poop prints everywhere!!! I stood outside the kennel and stoned for the next 5 min and ended up giving up as i told her i wasnt ready ahahah. She told me to imagine myself in a bubble like those hamster ball and the dogs will eventually stay away when i go in.

I didnt stop there. I reflected during the weekdays and think about how i can improve myself. And finally on one session I managed to go in without coming out with shit printed tee shirt. :D

Along the way, I was crowned as the champion for SHIT AWARD. I can pick up to 3-4 bags of poop on every session without fail -_-

Every session just gets better and better. More people sign up to try, and those who came quite a few times become closer, we walk even further and further, more dogs went out for walks instead of the usual few. We explored more new places and the whole thing became more organised and I FALL IN LOVE WITH PACK WALK.

Theres too much too elaborate so i shall just end here.

Will have a more detailed post of what we have been doing , the places we conquered and amusing things we encountered throughout this half a year in the shelter :)

to be continued.