Wanted: Volunteers to cuddle babies, play with puppies, and taste ice cream.
Looking for volunteer opportunities? You won’t find that ad—not in real life, anyway. Then again, you probably won’t see one detailing the true work behind an opportunity: Wanted: Someone to wash 20 loads of laundry, mop poopy kennels, and rake dirt. For free.
That’s because no one would answer such an ad, right? But people do. Behind every cute puppy-cuddling opportunity is a mop and broom, a rake and lawnmower, a stack of dirty laundry, and a long to-do list—and Cinderella is nowhere in sight. Good volunteers know that helping cute and fuzzy animals sometimes means getting down and dirty. From building fences and mowing lawns to cleaning kennels and doing laundry, these volunteers do what needs to be done to care for locals animals.
Hamming it up
Prospective volunteers might expect pig work to be dirty work. And according to Sue Parkinson of Lil Orphan Hammies, it is. But it’s also fulfilling—if you have a passion for pigs, that is.
Parkinson has run a pig sanctuary on her five acres in Solvang to care for homeless, abused, or neglected potbellied pigs for about 18 years. The sanctuary is a far cry from what she thought she’d get into when she got her first pot-bellied pig. That was 20 years ago, and the pig was a gift.
“It was the height of the pot-bellied pig craze,” she explained. “Who didn’t want one?”
Shortly after the craze began, however, there was the fallout.
Once the cute wore off, some pot-bellied pig owners realized the full scope of responsibility and care that goes into owning such an animal. They also realized that pigs—even pot-bellied ones—grow fairly large. A good number of pot-bellied pigs eventually found themselves unwanted or neglected.
Anxious to cash in on the craze, some sellers had promised buyers the pigs would stay small and often instructed them to feed the pig smaller amounts to ensure its diminutive stature. The sparse feedings would typically create an aggressive pig that would charge or bite.
On the opposite end, other owners overfed their pigs, resulting in overweight pigs living in tiny homes and trying to use a litter box.
“People are so trainable by their pigs,” Parkinson said. “It doesn’t take long for a pig to realize if they whine, their people will feed them. Then people will feed them just to get them to stop whining.”
Parkinson likened pigs to dogs, what with their unique personalities—though there’s a distinct difference between porcines and canines.
“Dogs want to please you,” Parkinson explained. “Pigs want you to please them. And they have ways of letting you know it. Their lives are all about eating, and when they want affection they’ll tell you, and when they are done they will turn around and ignore you.”
A couple of years after she received her first pot-bellied pig, Parkinson rescued one. Then another. Because she lived on a large property, it wasn’t inconvenient to rescue pigs in need. Eventually, her efforts became a full-scale operation to rescue, rehabilitate, and care for abused or unwanted pot-bellied pigs.
“Back then, there was no place to take these pigs,” Parkinson said.
Now, thanks to Parkinson, there is. Lil Orphan Hammies boasts about 82 pigs, most of which are senior or convalescent. Some are adopted by carefully screened homes. Nearly 30 volunteers spend time making sure the operation works. If it wasn’t for them, Parkinson—who works nights at a hotel and restaurant—would have a hard time keeping up with the pigs’ care.
Volunteers help clean and feed, but they also screen homes, transport pigs, solicit donations of needed items, and handle dirty jobs. Because the tasks aren’t as attractive as some volunteers hope, there’s high turnover, Parkinson said.
“I have a hard time keeping volunteers, because people think, ‘Oh, work with pot-bellied pigs!’ and they realize it’s all about raking and washing the water bowls,” Parkinson said.
The volunteers she does have are located all over the state—and even the country. One such volunteer ran a blanket drive and just got a Las Vegas hotel to donate 6,000 bedspreads.
Parkinson explained that though she’s got a group of hardcore volunteers, most of whom are pig owners themselves, she could use more.
“I wish I had more volunteers,” she said. “People that would just say, ‘Hey, let’s rake today.”
Dog days
At the Humane Society of Santa Maria Valley, play is part of the job for volunteers. The no-kill shelter wants the animals to get used to playing and being around people.
“The importance of the volunteers is to exercise [the animals], socialize them to make them more adoptable,” said operations manager and volunteer coordinator Bobbi Gilman.
So volunteers spend time in the cat room playing with cats or walking dogs on a trail outside of the Humane Society facility. Once a month, the dogs are walked through Waller Park, sporting little neckerchiefs that read “I’m adoptable.”
Unfortunately, animals with a lack of socialization, play time, and affection from people show it in their behavior. Cats begin to return to a more feral state, and dogs exhibit signs of depression and can become more aggressive or bite.
Volunteering at the Humane Society isn’t all fun and play, however—there is work to do. There are towels that need to be washed and folded, floors to be mopped, surgical instruments in the spay and neuter clinic that need to be sterilized. Gilman walked past a cage recently occupied by a dog and pointed to the floor as an example.
“See?” she said. “It’s not a glamorous job, but it needs to be done.”
Gilman asks at orientations why, out of all the places they could possibly pick, the prospective volunteers chose to work at the Humane Society. Gilman herself started with the group as a volunteer. She said she knows its needs—and also, since she’d been on the other side, she knows the volunteers’ desire to work with animals,” she said.
“It’s always, ‘I love animals,’” she said. “And either, ‘I can’t get an animal where I live,’ or ‘I can’t get any more animals because I have too many.’”
Pamela Berryman is one of those volunteers. She moved to Santa Maria a little more than a year ago. After a while, she wanted to do something, and her love of animals drew her to the Humane Society. The fact that it’s a no-kill shelter was also important to her.
“You know it’s hard enough seeing them go,” she said. “I’ll leave and come back and somebody’s gone, and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, so I try to say goodbye every day.”
Slowing down the pace
Linda Germany of Nipomo devotes her time to animals that know how to bask in the good life. She volunteers her time at Bob and Judy Thomas’ turtle sanctuary. The Thomases have between 200 and 300 turtles of all different species on their five acres in Arroyo Grande.
Germany, a registered vet tech who is now retired, said volunteering with animals keeps her in the business. Though she’s worked with a variety of animals, she’s volunteered other places and didn’t find a good fit until she started volunteering with the Thomases and working with the turtles.
“It’s what I know,” Germany said. “I really enjoy working at Bob’s because of the species of tortoise he has there.”
Like Parkinson and her pot-bellied pig sanctuary, the Thomases never set out to have a turtle sanctuary, it just seem to develop. It started when they would give educational talks about turtles. Inevitably, after the talk, someone would give them a turtle that needed help. That became the norm, and the sanctuary grew.
The Thomases have water turtles and everything from small Egyptian to large Galapagos tortoises. Baby turtles gain their strength during their stay, while older tortoises—including one that’s more than 100 years old—bask in the sun. Guinea pigs help keep the grass in the turtle pens trim while the turtles hibernate, an emu greets guests, and the Thomases also house some birds that need rescuing.
On a recent tour of the turtle sanctuary, Bob strolled the manicured grounds, pointing out the variety of tortoises. As he walked by certain pens, some of the little shelled animals would stop eating and run to the edge of the pen to greet him and look at what was going on. Yes, run. Tortoises, it seems, can move faster than you’d think.
“They’re very personable,” Bob explained. “Some of them come up and want to have their heads scratched. They come running when they see me doing a tour.”
That’s not to say all the jobs on the turtle sanctuary are fun, as Germany knows.
“It’s not all kitchy coo-y working with the animals,” she explained. “I’ve helped him put up fences. I’ve got on the lawn mower. It’s work.”
And she admits that there are the parts that aren’t so fun.
“It’s the repetition, changing the turtle ponds, cutting the grape vines the turtles feed on,” she explained. “Repetitiveness is probably the worst thing for a volunteer.”
The Thomases employ a full-time onsite caretaker and have about three regular volunteers, without whom they would struggle to keep up their turtle sanctuary. Bob said the sanctuary could use help from volunteers who could devote half a day a week to do minor jobs like change the water in the tortoise pens.
“We are saving a lot of turtles’ lives and educating the public about their care, so we’re not getting as many deformed or with metabolic bone disease from being kept inside,” Bob said. “But more people need to know about them that will protect them out in the wild.”
Contact Arts Editor Shelly Cone at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 14-21, 2010.