Teen Ink Article

At the Local Animal Shelter Helping animals is one of the best decisions I have ever made. One of my favorite things to pass time and help the community is, volunteering at a local animal shelter . I will tell you how I helped the community by doing one of my favorite hobbies, volunteering. I love animals and going there helped me decide my future. In the summer when I wasn’t hanging out with my friends, I was extremely bored . I decided I would try looking online to find something to do to clear my boredom.

As I was scrolling through websites, I had found an idea, the animal shelter. I printed out the application, and brought it to the shelter. As soon as I started volunteering, I knew that I wanted to keep volunteering as often as I could. The first day I went, I was super excited but I didn’t know what to expect.When we arrived, my first choice was to go and walk the dogs. A lot of the dogs there had been strays, and eventually the shelter rescued them.

Some of the dogs had been returned because their owners did not want to take care of them anymore. My second choice was to play with the cats and little kittens in the socializing room. It is a room where you can take the animals in an play with them. They have lots of toys for cats and dogs to play with, this was very entertaining. One time when I was playing with a kitten, it didn’t want to leave me.

I tried putting her back in the cage but every time I did, she would jump right back onto me. Sometimes they had more than just cats and dogs. One time when I went, they had a duck! I wasn’t really sure how he ended up there, but he was very entertaining. Now that I had been there, I knew I wanted to do more for the community. After I had been volunteering for a few months, I wanted to find something else I could do. Well I had been wanting a dog for awhile and I saw one at the shelter that I just had to have.

After a little bit of convincing, my dad finally said we could go and get Dakota, the dog I wanted. Dakota is the dog I adopted, but that wasn’t her name at the shelter. Her name there was Taffy. She had been found a few towns over. The person who found her kept her for two weeks and no one ever claimed her.Although it is disappointing, I am very happy that I could get my own dog.

Not only did this please me to have my own dog but, it opened up another spot at the shelter. This kept me busy after school started back up again. Although I would have a busy schedule, I was so happy to help the animal shelter by opening up a spot for another dog. Volunteering at the shelter is one of my favorite community service projects. I encourage everybody to try a community service project at least once in their life. Although the animal shelter may not be for everyone, there is always different options for community service.