No, I didn't get another dog

Yesterday I spent the bulk of my afternoon volunteering at the Oregon Humane Society. The first half hour was spent in orientation, learning how to interact with the animals and keep oneself from getting bit. I could see the eyes of others in the volunteer group widen, wondering what they'd gotten themselves into. As the owner of a large dog, though, I wasn't too concerned. In fact, later when playing with some of the dogs, the volunteer coordinator kept giving me the large ones as she knew I'd be comfortable with them. After orientation, we went outside to several enclosed dog play areas. Then, Sasha, the coordinator, brought a dog to each yard. First, I had a German Shepherd named Lucille who very much loved retrieving a squeaky toy I'd toss for her (She could teach Abby a thing or two!). After Lucille, I was visited by a setter named Tanner. He was pretty aloof and too old to really want to play. But in the interest of making him as adoptable as possible I just worked on getting him to acknowledge me and let me pet him. The more he's willing to interact with a human, the greater his chances of connecting with someone looking to adopt. My third, and last, dog was an adorable little guy named Cheerio (picture). He was new, so Sasha couldn't tell me what sort of play he was interest in. He was only eight months and I quickly found out he was most interested in crawling in my lap and letting me scratch him all over! Which was fine with me. I love dogs that like to snuggle. It really made me wonder why he was surrendered for adoption...it could've been anything. Perhaps his owners couldn't afford him any longer and knew it would only get harder the older he got.

After playing with the dogs, we moved to the cattery where we each sat in one of the community cat rooms and interacted with them. I joined forces with a regular volunteer named Brenda. So she and I sat and visited for a half hour or so with purring cats in our laps. I talked to her a lot about volunteering as I really think it's something I'd enjoy doing on a regular basis. They have volunteers that exercise the dogs. That would be fun right up my alley!

The best part of the whole experience, though? Looking at the website just now and seeing that Cheerio and about four of the cats I played with were all adopted yesterday!