Oregon Humane Society

Saturday, April 25th, ten of us visited the Oregon Humane Society. With group volunteering, they like us to "socialize" the animals. It's something they can train us to do quickly, lets us have face time with the dogs and cats right away, and gives the animals some attention getting them more ready for adoption!

Our group had an orientation and tour then went to the dog runs. We got into pairs and our staff person Sasha would bring us a dog, introduce us and then leave us to do tricks, fetch, brush and pet our dog. After about half an hour some of us headed to the cat colony rooms and some of us (those of us with cat allergies or who have cats with FIV at home and are worried about passing a cold) stayed with the dogs. We arranged it with Sasha that this exact group can come back and skip the orientation so we can have more time with the animals. It would be great to start a new group though if others are interested, and then we could have two Return Serve teams rotating through OHS!

We didn't have any adoptions in our group Saturday, but we all have a token to pass to a friend or family member worth $55 toward the adoption of a "lifelong, loving companion from the Oregon Humane Society"! If you or someone you know is thinking about adopting, please let us know and
we'll get you this great deal!

Also, the OHS website is pretty great. There's a pet cam in the cat room where Wendy was on Saturday (she was almost famous) and then here is the page for the animals we met: dogs and cats. We hope these guys are all adopted by the time you read this, but if you're browsing, here are a few of the dog friends we met: Angel, Ginger, Roxy and Zuko (both pictured here on our blog). We were told average adoption time is 10 days so really the animals rotate through pretty quickly. OHS will keep an animal as long as it takes to be adopted as long as it remains healthy at the shelter. In 2006, OHS found homes for 8,671 pets, 99% of dogs and 86% of cats. For more on their policies, here is a link to the OHS FAQ page.

Our first animal project definitely a success - more to come!

Obama picks Oregon Nike executive to lead volunteer programs

Cool props are given in this article about how volunteering in Portland (and elsewhere) has seen a surge since Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We're part of the surge!!! (The good kind of surge.)
Good luck to Ms. Eitel and thanks so much to the members of our group for the work so far.

Coming up on Saturday: we cross the 100 hours of service mark!

Time Flies When You're Scraping Trails!

Today we did some trail maintenance at Powell Butte. Hard work, that trail maintenance! There was no rain this morning and it was a pleasant, cool temperature, the difficulty came when we had to stop hiking (fun) and start working (hard). Still we did well I think, scraping organic material off the trails to keep them from getting mucky with future rains. The idea is that as trails become mucky, trail users walk around the wet spots, making the trails larger and damaging the areas around the trail. If we do our work, the trail stays well drained and nicely packed and hikers have no reason to venture off the path. The most fun task was gathering logs and sticks and brush and laying them in the curve of switch-backs to shrink the size of the curves - no shortcuts! It was nice to explore Powell Butte and to think a bit about the science and art of trail making.