In 2017 it was one of my goals to volunteer. I wanted to find a volunteer opportunity that was something I enjoyed and would be excited to do. There's a ton of chances with non-profit organizations, because of course they depend on volunteers. But there's not very many that fit the bill I was looking for.

The first volunteer event I did was a City Park Trail Clean Up event near Grapevine Lake. I love the outdoors and oddly love working outside too (when it's not in the scorching heat). It took about 3 hours of a Saturday morning and it was over with. It was a great opportunity to meet new people but didn't fulfill what I was looking for and social connections didn't last. 

The next month I came across a volunteer listing that was titled, "Volunteer Photographer - Animal Shelter". It immediately grabbed my attention. I clicked on the link as fast as I could to get my place  "in line" for the position. I signed up for the volunteer orientation and counted down the days until then. I'm very much an introvert (believe it or not) so my anxiety spiked as the day grew closer. Who would be there? Would my photography be good enough?

There was quite a lot of people at the orientation, both young and old. Everyone seemed excited to get started with photographing animals and helping them get adopted.

Though there was a lot of people there, I only really met one person. Her name was Becky. Becky and I decided to partner up for our volunteering opportunity at the shelter. The main goal with the volunteer outreach the shelter did was to find people who would be capable of photographing the animals and writing a short biography about each one. I really wanted to focus on photographing the animals and Becky was a professional copywriter. She would be perfect at writing the bios about all the animals we met. It was a perfect match!

On average, Becky and I volunteered for 1 hour on 1 day once a week. We closed the chapter to our Animal Shelter Adventures in February of 2020. Over the 28 months we volunteered, we photographed and wrote bios for over 275 animals. Our time totaled over 130 hours! The blog I've put together here is a massive compilation of all the dogs, cats, and other animals we met.  The images you'll see below isn't even the entire 275 animals we spent time with. I have an archive of over 3,000 images from my time at the shelter... and that's FINAL photographs.

[ About the photo to the left/above ]

This was the first puppy (I call all dogs puppies) I fell in love with during my time volunteering. She was the sweetest pit mix and was very skittish about the picture-taking sound my camera made. I told myself if she didn't get adopted within the proper amount of time, I would absolutely adopt her to save her. She was eventually adopted and I can only hope she's still with a loving family. 

[ LEFT/TOP IMAGE ] A typical day in the outdoor play yards. [ MIDDLE IMAGE ] The sweetest little puppy biting my hand in the photo studio. [ RIGHT/BOTTOM IMAGE ] A typical day in the mini photography studio inside a small room within the shelter. 

Though we captured so many joyful images of the puppies outside, it was impossible to take every dog and cat that was currently at the shelter out of their kennels. Below are just a handful (yes, it's actually quite a lot) of images I snapped just before the shelter closed for the day. It was our 10-15 minutes before closing time that we spent time talking to the puppies and kitties through the glass. You can always tell which animals have been there the longest because those are the ones that know when it's bedtime. That means when you're walking around at 5:50 pm, most of the animals are curled up in their beds already trying to fall asleep. By 6:00 pm (closing time) they are all lost in a dream land of hopefulness. 

It may be sad to see all these sweet animals locked up behind in their kennels behind glass, but it's the sad reality for these animals.