It’s not the glamorous of working at an animal rescue shelter that brings Sandra Shore to Merritt from her home in Ontario year after year.
It’s the inspiration she finds in the people and the pups that she works with that keep her coming back.
Shore came from Guelph, Ont. to Merritt to spend last week volunteering at Angel’s Animal Rescue in the Sunshine Valley just west of Merritt.
Last week’s visit was her fourth in three years to the dog rescue.
With coonhound Keeper at her side, Shore told the Herald she volunteers at her local humane society and some Ontario-based rescues, but a few years ago, she began following her lifelong passion for animals further afield.
She ended up in Utah, where she volunteered at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary — the subject of the National Geographic program DogTown.
“I was so impressed with the rehab work that they were doing and the training and how to reverse traumatized situations and all that sort of stuff,” Shore said. “I went to Utah two summers in a row and worked alongside some very experienced caregivers, [and] learned lots of great techniques about how to work with dogs that were coming from difficult situations.”
When she returned to her home in Guelph that year, she was supporting some Ontario-based rescues during the Pepsi Refresh project.
“Pepsi encouraged you not only to support your own groups but to support other groups that could be doing amazing work. I ended up finding Angel’s Animal Rescue and what clicked with me was their vision of becoming the DogTown of Canada. As soon as I read that, I thought to myself, OK, I know what this means. It means bringing in amazing types of services, rehabilitation needs, training, helping these traumatized animals get past their difficult circumstances and allow them to heal, recover and blossom into who they were meant to be.”
Angel’s ended up earning enough votes to receive the $100,000 prize.
That June, Shore hopped a plane and volunteered at Angel’s for the first time, only to return that September.
“There were so many projects underway that I thought I just had to come back and help,” she said.
While she is here, Shore stays with friends Trish Alexandruk, her husband and their dogs, whom she met when Alexandruk was the volunteer co-ordinator for Angel’s.
On that second trip, Shore even adopted a dog and brought her home to Guelph.
Since then, she’s made two more trips to Merritt, taking a week’s holiday from her work at the University of Guelph library to volunteer. And it’s not exactly a relaxing vacation.
“They’re long days. It’s heavy, physical work, but you come home feeling great. I love it. I really, really enjoy it.”
She said seeing the animals improve — some so much that they’re adopted into families — is the best reward.
“When you’ve worked with them and see how far they’ve come and you see them placed in a loving home, it’s amazing,” she said.
Shore pointed to Keeper as a prime example of how far a dog can come.
“He was literally found in the mud. He was pretty much at death’s door. He had a severe head wound, his ear was all infected … it was horrific. He couldn’t even move. He had to be lifted from the ground and moved.”
Shore said the vet originally gave him a 10 per cent chance of survival from the head wound that left him partially scalped. Today, Keeper, an energetic, curious and affectionate hound, has healed to the point that the scar is almost invisible and he is ready for adoption, Shore said.
Shore said the shelter is currently constructing a critical care building, which will help dogs with severe injuries like Keeper heal and in a sterile environment. She said contributions from donors and one particularly generous couple, along with hard-working volunteers, are making that building possible.
During her week at Angel’s, Shore did a bit of everything.
“I care for these guys, clean pens, haul water, feed them, we do enrichment, we walk them, we play with them, we help sometimes in basic training,” she said, adding there are endless ways to contribute to the cause.
“People can volunteer and help in so many ways. In the end, everything that doesn’t have to be done by Judanna and George [Caros, the rescue co-founders], frees up their time to be able to help more and more dogs and spend more and more time with the dogs that we have. Everything goes back into providing care for those most at risk. What they do is inspirational.”
