#99 Volunteering

Volunteering has always been a tricky subject for me. On the one hand, Heck yes! Volunteering! Helping your community! Awesomeness!
But on the other, I've always been crazy busy, and a lot of my "normal" activities are awfully feel good. Do I still need to volunteer when my job is helping teenagers recover from drug addictions and sexual abuse?

The answer, of course, is yes. There is no such thing as "good enough" when it comes to making the world a better place and helping out your fellow man. Trying to find a place to volunteer, that gets trickier though. Not that it's hard to find volunteer positions, but finding something that I'll actually enjoy and want to come back and do again, that's harder. I am unlikely to ever volunteer at a hospital because I just honestly don't like them very much. And anything that would be a fun job is probably a paid job, so I'd be miserable. And I'm not interested in misery. I want to volunteer as much to uplift my own life as those I'm helping. Which probably sounds selfish, but I think it's true of most people. I'm not adverse to hard work, but I want to get some benefit out of it, whether it's that feel-good feeling in your gut or just a fun afternoon. There needs to be some incentive and data-entry just doesn't quite make the cut, I'm afraid.

As I think I've mentioned before, Minot recently flooded. Like, holy bejeesus flooded. I've never been around this kind of flooding before and it's kind of freaky. Where I'm from, the water just goes down the hill and away. It's why you don't live right on the river. We get mudslides, but not standing water that lasts for months. Lots of people have been displaced and lost their homes. People are living in hotels and staying with friends. We were lucky enough to find friends who welcomed our animals into their home, but not everyone has that luxury.

So a shelter was set up with kennels and cages, a place that people could leave their pets until they were in a situation to reclaim them. Buildings were filled with dog kennels and distressed animals of all shapes and sizes. There were full-time volunteer staff there from Noah's Wish who took charge of the volunteers and the immediate care of the animals, but volunteers from the community were still needed for simply tasks like walking the dogs. The job served two purposes. First, it got the dogs out of their kennels for a little while, which was very good for all of them. Also, it gave the staff there a chance to clean the kennels while the dogs were out and occupied.

It wasn't a glamorous job. I didn't spend the day strolling leisurely around the property with well-behaved and grateful pets. I think that they might have judged you to some degree on the leash that you grabbed in the beginning (I grabbed a heavy-duty nylon leash as I'm used to larger animals and I'm not easily intimidated. The woman in front of me took a delicate pink leash with rhinestones on it). I walked 5 dogs in a period of 3 hours, ranging from "Zeus" who could not contain his enthusiasm for being outside (we ran a few laps around the property) to the little Irish setter who was so intimidated by the whole situation that he spent most of his walk with his belly close to the ground. I did manage to pull a few ticks off of his scruff while we were there though.

All in all, it was a good day. I was tired and thirsty and hot and my arms hurt from being dragged by ill-mannered dogs, but it was a good day. I went home feeling good about myself and glad that I was able to help. I still don't feel like Minot is "home" or "my community" but I'm still living here. And I can still help to try to make it a better place and to help the members of it, both two and four legged.

I'm also intrigued by Noah's Wish now. Reading through their website, it sounds like their trip to Minot is one of the tamer "deployments" that they go on. They're often out rescuing and providing first aid to animals in major disaster situations, like the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. It might be something to keep in mind. We'll see.