My Journey With Health And Fitness – Let’s Talk About My Volunteer Agencies (3 of 3)

It’s travel day. Unfortunately our flight to Cancun doesn’t leave until 11:30pm so it is going to be a really long day. However, despite my best attempts to talk myself out of it, the weather was so beautiful this morning that I went out for a quick 5k run. I’m actually glad I did as it got me going for the day. Now I need to find things to keep me occupied until it is time to head to the airport.

Today I am going to talk about my 3rd volunteer agency, Elderdog. In the last post I noted how I started working with Brella Community Services through my volunteer work with the United Way. Well, it is through volunteering with Brella that I ended up with Elderdog. Last October the volunteer coordinator at Brella forwarded an email to me that she had received from Elderdog looking for volunteers to walk dogs for seniors who are no longer able to do this with their pets. She knew I loved animals and that I am an avid walker and she was right, I jumped at the chance. Now, I walk the wonderful Miss Keeva, a 13 year old Australian Kelpie Shepherd who just makes me smile. Despite her age she is quite spry but is also very stubborn and it is her that directs where and how long we walk. Still she is sweet and I love the fact that when when she is happy (like when she is rolling around on the grass) that she smiles.

Last Sunday at the volunteer fair I was surprised at how few people knew about Elderdog but then I had to admit I hadn’t heard about them before I got that email. That’s kind of what prompted me to do this series of posts, to let people know what these fabulous organizations do. Obviously Elderdog provides volunteers to walk dogs for seniors but there is so much more. For example, when I get back from Mexico I am going to be assisting with the rehoming program. This is where a senior who has a senior dog (10+) can no longer care for them. We will assess the dog and find a new home for the beloved pet and make sure they are well cared for. We also provide fostering services when a senior’s dog needs a temporary home such as in the case of a hospital stay. Other work we do includes assisting seniors with pet care and pet grooming, picking up pet food, and taking the pet to the vet. As you can see it is a wonderful organization that is just there to help. We have ‘pawds’ all across Canada and you can check them out at elderdog.ca

In this series I have only hilighted my 3 main volunteer agencies. I actual have several others but I felt these 3 would be enough to show the kind of awesome agencies we have out there helping our communities.