Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Dogtown at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

Emma (our greyhound) was so sweet to let Dan and I volunteer at Dogtown for a whole week to share our love with other dogs. It was an experience of a lifetime! Below are some pics from our trip - Enjoy :-)

Checking in at Dog Headquarters to sign up to volunteer each day. The volunteer program and staff were awesome!














Below are the Dog octagons where some of the dogs are housed with indoor and outdoor runs. There are about 20-30 dogs per octagon. Dogtown had about 450 dogs there while we were visiting. Each volunteer session, we usually started off by taking the dogs on long walks. All in all, we probably worked with ~100 dogs over the entire week.















































The awesome cottages we stayed in on the Sanctuary. What a view!



We really had a great time with our sleepover dogs - Ruth, Aurora, and Brie. They all did great and would make wonderful pets. Aurora (black dog) was a little shy around men. After each sleepover, we filled out an evaluation form for the sanctuary so they could evaluate each dog's progress.




If you watch Dogtown on the National Geographic Channel, you should recognize the folks in the following pictures - John and Ann. The sanctuary staff are super friendly and helpful including everyone you see on the TV show. Ann helped us get Aurora into our vehicle for our doggie sleepover.



We were able to see some of the Victory Dogs while visiting. Below is Curly. He was too shy to stand on his own for us so one of the caretakers carried him for us to see. Volunteers are not allowed to touch or work with the Victory dogs per court order in the county. Only staff are allowed to work with them.


There were several classes and demos to attend also - like puppy class and a water fitness demo.