Schinag-O-Blog: Bunnies and Horses and Goats and Guinea Pigs and...

This past Saturday I had my orientation at the New Hampshire SPCA. I have missed my volunteer work at the Seattle Animal Shelter, but what with my broken foot, I put off volunteering at NHSPCA until my foot was better. (Which it is! Woohoo!)

This place is amazing. They must have some seriously wealthy donors.

For those of you wondering, they are a no-kill shelter (unless an animal is so far gone that it cannot be saved). In fact, last year they had a 97% live adoption rate, which I can tell you is outstanding.

I will be volunteering with the Small Animal Team, which is almost the equivalent of the Critter Team at SAS. The only difference is that the Critter Team also took care of barnyard animals, where NHSPCA has a separate Barnyard Animals Team because they get so many.

NHSPCA doesn't have very many dogs. Apparently they've done such effective spay and neuter outreach that is has drastically decreased as a problem. In fact, they often take dogs from other shelters. The volunteer coordinator told me that the next day, Sunday, a load of dogs was arriving from Alabama! They also don't have too many small animals. But holy crap, do they have cats. There are cats everywhere! The small animals technically have two rooms, but the cats take up one. Cats even take up one of the dog rooms!

Here are some pictures. They are all from the outside, since I thought it would both give the wrong impression and be annoying if I was snapping pictures during my orientation tour. I'll take inside pictures next time.

This was the best shot I could get of the campus. Right in front is one of the paddocks for large barnyard animals. To the right is their learning center. The middle is the adoption center, and to the left is the barn for the farm animals.

Here is a closer shot of the front paddock with two horses in it. There is another paddock in the back (which I didn't take a picture of). On Saturday, the back paddock had two goats in it.

I include this picture because it is rare for many shelters to have a logo, or in fact to do much advertising at all, that includes animals other than cats and dogs. This one officially includes a horse and a rabbit, which is fantastic!

Here is a closer shot of the barn.

This is a closer shot of the learning center. In this building are administrative offices, a room for birthday parties, training rooms for people who have adopted new animals, and classrooms for camps, story times and more. I peeked in the birthday party room while I was there. A party was going on. Some animals live in the party room. One of those animals is a ferret. The party room was loud and rambunctious, but the ferret was sleeping soundly. That cracked me up for some reason! I guess because ferrets are such spazzes, other people spazzing out don't effect them at all!