Location: PAWS
Date: Tuesday, December 03, 2013; 3:00-5:00 pm
When it comes to animal shelters
in Chicago, ‘PAWS’ is one of the
leading ones. According to their
website, “PAWS Chicago is the city's
largest No Kill humane organization, focused on solutions to end the killing of
homeless pets. Since our founding in 1997, homeless dogs and cats killed
annually in the City of Chicago has dropped more than 50 percent. PAWS Chicago
is working to build a No Kill Chicago -- a city where pets are no longer
destroyed just because they are homeless.” I had worked an event for them through One Brick, but not
had an opportunity to volunteer directly with them. One of my colleagues at the office is an avid pet lover and
floated an idea of folks from our company taking an excursion to ‘PAWS’ for an afternoon of
volunteering. She asked how many
of us would be interested and because it was during working hours, only got
about 7 positive responses. She
then effectively took over the administrative process, which included signing
waivers and contact information forms.
She also got us matching shirts to wear, and so this Tuesday afternoon, a
group wearing matching attire boarded a CTA train to go to ‘PAWS’ for volunteering.
While we would be preparing some goody bags, there was a potential for
actual interactions with the pets at the end. Needless to say, we were all excited.
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| Someone was spying on me |
As we
approached “PAWS’, I looked inside through
the various windows overlooking the street and spotted several cats staring at me. We went inside and the general décor of
the center was very welcoming, with a fireplace and a holiday tree. On either side were doors leading to
corridors and were titled ‘Kitty City’
and ‘Dog Town’, respectively. It was easy to infer that through those
doors were sections where the animals were housed. Our host was a woman called Jane, and she took us to a big
conference room for our volunteer orientation presentation. She herself is a volunteer with ‘PAWS’, having joined after her
retirement. The information in the
video was to educate us about the organization. We learned that ‘PAWS’
is one of the few “No-kill” shelters
with state-of-the-art facilities, thanks to generous support from many. The animal’s house in ‘PAWS’ are rescued from the ‘Animal Care & Control Society’ and hopefully
they are adopted soon enough. In
fact, the statistics showed that the adoptions have been on the rise, with a 31%
increase in recent times. Many are
also fostered for a few weeks, so that they get used to humans. I asked if the people who foster end up adopting the same animal, and was told that this is referred to
as “failed fostering”. I said that by definition I would
definitely end up being a failure for sure!
 |
| The dog cone |
‘PAWS’ was having a 36-hour adoption event this weekend and needed
some goody bags to be prepared for handing out to the visitors. There were buckets and boxes of various
materials such as pamphlets, and so we formed an assembly line to fill out the
bags – similar to what I have done at numerous One Brick projects. We worked smoothly and it was done in
no time. Next was assembly of some
cones that pet owners put around dog’s necks to prevent them from scratching
after a surgery or an injury. It took
some skill to roll them in the right way, but we were soon done with those as
well. Now, it was time to
play.
First we walked through ’Kitty City’, which was a luxurious
accommodation for the cats, especially for a shelter. There were several rooms with kitties and they had different
toys and various pieces of furniture to entertain themselves with. We were told that we could go inside to
play with the kitties as long as we entered the room carefully and then closing the
door as soon as we were inside.
Some of our team decided to wait here, while the rest of us proceeded to
‘Dog Town’. There were 3 Levels of rooms, and we were allowed to enter
only the Level 1 rooms, not Level’s 2 or 3, which were only for the more
experienced volunteers. Unfortunately
there were only a few Level 1 rooms for us to go in, though the dogs in all of
the rooms were really excited to see us, and jumped up by the window as we
looked inside. I went inside one
of the rooms to play with a dog called ‘Heisenberg’,
though I could not locate ‘Schrödinger’s
Cat’. Yeah, sometimes I really
crack myself up!
 |
| Heisenberg |
Next I went inside a room, which
had 3 dogs. They required 3
volunteers in there, one with each of the dogs, so that they did not feel left
off. Else they fight for
attention, and I saw that as one of the dogs, wearing a ‘Spoilt Princess’ sweater- though he was a boy, - pushed another pup
away because he wanted to snuggle with me. I played there for some time and could have stayed longer, but
it was time to leave. We took a
group picture and then departed, happy that we had spent an afternoon doing
this. ‘PAWS’ had been everything as advertised, and it was fantastic to
have been able to serve, followed by a brief time of play. The next day I wrote the following blurb
for our internal website. I hope
it inspires others to come should we do this again.
“On Tuesday some members from AEP Energy visited PAWS to
volunteer with the organization followed by some play time with the four-legged
creatures. It started with a video
training on PAWS and its mission, after which the team prepared goody bags that
would be handed out at PAWS’ 36-hour ‘Adoptathon’ this coming weekend. A tricky assembly of the dog cones
followed this and then it was time to play. The team visited PAWS’ ‘Kitty Village’ and ‘Dog Town’ and
many members went inside the individual rooms to pet the animals. Most of the animals are strays and
rescued from ‘Animal Care & Control’ after a life of neglect and possible
abuse. Thus human contact is a
very important component of the animal’s rehabilitation and they were thrilled
to have someone show affection, even for a brief period of time. It is important to remember that while
the grind of daily life may not permit someone to do this all the time, in the
immortal words of Winnie The Pooh, ‘A little consideration, a little thought
for others, makes all the difference’”
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