12:42am
My second home, the Washington Area Humane Society
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The Washington Area Humane Society has become my second home; I can't imagine a more comfortable and loving place to spend my time. Where else can I go where I am ALWAYS welcomed and loved. The dogs are always happy to see me, just as happy as I am to see them. I am allergic to cats; therefore, I can't love on them. I wish that I could take each and every one out for a walk, every day, play on the hill, in the fenced in pens or merely sit on the driveway brush them out and love on them. Our shelter has happy dogs. We volunteers are lucky to be able to go inside of their cages and simply sit down with them and spend time with them. Both of my dogs were adopted from the Washington Area Humane Society. The staff and board members are the greatest; the animals are always first. There isn't anything they wouldn't do for them. Our Shelter manager, Lori, and our Kennel manager, Mary Grace, have hearts of gold. The other staff that I know are equally as loving and caring. Only the best for our babies! They know the animals so well; they could tell you every little thing about their personalities. I can't wait until dryer weather when we won't have so much mud and wet to struggle through; we'll have so much more fun with all of them on the hill. I was walking Casper a few days ago and Tracy had a big guy in the fenced in pen. We let them meet each other through the fence and they got along splendidly; so, we tried them out together in the pen...they had a blast together. It's always so nice to see them get on well with each other. Then Tracy and I took out two new arrivals to our shelter. They came in together and were so happy to be with each other and not in separate pens. Tracy and I brushed them out and trimmed the chow, cutting off all of her matted fur. I'm sure she felt a hundred times better. Their master died and the wife didn't want them. They're a little older; but they are so very cute, especially together. We where both saying that we hoped they'd get adopted together. Many volunteers have been helping to clear the land. It's really nice to have so much land to walk dogs now. There is a great amount to do on the property. We'll be raking and burning the brush for some time to come. Seed will have to be donated and planted. We have a few organizations who want to donate benches; it will be so nice to have them up on the hill. The new fenced in pen that has been donated by Metro Fence Company will be a GREAT added bonus for playing with the dogs and allowing them to run and play...ok, for us to run and play with them, too. :) A few local plant nurseries have offered donations of trees, bushes and flowers; I can't wait to take them up on the offer. The hill will be so lush. We'll be looking for supporters to build an Agility Yard; I'm sure we won't have too much difficulty in finding them. Once zootoo helped us to bring attention to our shelter people have been offering all sorts of things. We've had more volunteers; people are calling the shelter more now than ever before. We plan to keep this momentum going. Right now we have an excellent group of volunteers. More are coming every day. The community is constantly at our shelter...why just today, a local elementary school, Bower Hill, did a donation Character Counters paper drive. The students collected newspapers and that generated $300.00 to our shelter. Isn't that wonderful! What a great duel lesson to all of those young minds. A local auto shop owner wrote a $100.00 check to our Land Project that he read about in the paper. Oh, our local newspapers, TV, radio stations could not be more supportive of our shelter. They are always helping us out. We are a lucky little shelter. Our animals are much loved. Our towns people love us and we love them. My family have moved around the country quite a bit; I've never seen any other community who gives so much to their local animal shelter as our community does; and we are located pretty far off the beaten-path. I know that we "band-aid" many areas of our shelter, that we've all learned to live without a lot of the finer things in life; however, love is the finest gift that can ever be given. And we have that gift; so, we can live without all those other things if we must. As much as zootoo has done for our shelter I must admit that I will be happy when it is all over. It has forced me to have to spend less and less time with the animals and more time with the public. I miss the animals. I love the public too; they've been GREAT; however, I miss the animals more. In a perfect world no shelter would have to suffer and do without the necessities; but we live in the real world. Soon I will be able to redirect my efforts to caring for the dogs again. Soon I will be back to walking and loving on them. Soon, many of our volunteers will be working again on the Land Project. After all, I really love to hear from the staff about something else that they need donated; because, the community is really always willing to come through. It may take a few phone calls; but the local people and businesses always seem to come through. This is a great town. This is a great county. These are great people. And most of all, these are truly lovely animals; all of them. Well, I'm not really a journal writer; however, I am trying. Each day at the shelter is a new adventure. And I look forward to each and every new adventure. It is said that "Home is where the heart is"; well, my heart is in both my home home and my shelter home; so, it's my second home.
