Personal Narrative: My Experience As A Humane Society Volunteer
My Experience as a Humane Society Volunteer In elementary school, I decided that I wanted to work with animals. My mom told me that Humane Society volunteers had to be 8 or older, so I waited. Soon after my 8th birthday, after looking forward to the opportunity for what felt like many years, I was finally able to attend classes in dog walking, dog bathing, and cat house monitoring. Of those, I took to bathing the dogs because it had the least rules. I don't remember whether I chose to work with my mom or I was too young to volunteer without her, but both of us would drive out to Honolulu every weekend to work for a few hours. The steps were easy: choose a dog, walk the dog to the bathing area, close the chain-link gate, and use the provided
shampoo to wash the dog. Then, we would bring each dog back to their pen and find another that needed to be cleaned until we were out of time. Although the task was easy, it felt like important service to animals as well as to the Humane Society staff. It was also my first experience with a job. Because the dogs had to be washed before their scheduled appointments to be spayed or neutered, I learned about the importance of fulfilling a commitment when others were depending on me. Eventually, I stopped driving all the way to Honolulu on the weekends and I waited about four years to volunteer again. The Humane Society advertised the opportunity to advertise the opportunity to adopt dogs, so I signed up with my mom again, but this time, it was only to fulfill hours in a service project required by my school. I would later write a report on how much volunteering meant to me, even though I only had a superficial understanding of the benefits. The benefits were, of course, the chance to provide dogs with a permanent family and ultimately improve their lives.
Looking back, I can appreciate that it meant enough to me at the time to motivate myself to actually appear at Petco for five hours on a weekend, and it feels more real right now than it did then. I can easily act indifferent about how I felt about the work at the time, but I wouldn't change anything that happened to me, so if I received anything from the experience of volunteering, it is that hard work pays off in the future, and serving people (and dogs) is enough
shampoo to wash the dog. Then, we would bring each dog back to their pen and find another that needed to be cleaned until we were out of time. Although the task was easy, it felt like important service to animals as well as to the Humane Society staff. It was also my first experience with a job. Because the dogs had to be washed before their scheduled appointments to be spayed or neutered, I learned about the importance of fulfilling a commitment when others were depending on me. Eventually, I stopped driving all the way to Honolulu on the weekends and I waited about four years to volunteer again. The Humane Society advertised the opportunity to advertise the opportunity to adopt dogs, so I signed up with my mom again, but this time, it was only to fulfill hours in a service project required by my school. I would later write a report on how much volunteering meant to me, even though I only had a superficial understanding of the benefits. The benefits were, of course, the chance to provide dogs with a permanent family and ultimately improve their lives.
Looking back, I can appreciate that it meant enough to me at the time to motivate myself to actually appear at Petco for five hours on a weekend, and it feels more real right now than it did then. I can easily act indifferent about how I felt about the work at the time, but I wouldn't change anything that happened to me, so if I received anything from the experience of volunteering, it is that hard work pays off in the future, and serving people (and dogs) is enough