Page 177 - Book about Friendship and Future.Stories of Volunteers.

Daria Archekova

KFC Politech
Tomsk

Vital Call

From 2014 to 2017 I was looking for an animal shelter that
would need my help: searching announcements, calling, finding
out whether my help was needed, where I could come up and
buy something. I was rejected all the time: “We do not need
volunteers now”, “We are afraid that people will hurt the animals,
hence we do not share our address”, “We have volunteers in staff,
the job will not suit you”. And it happened with every animal shel-
ter. I never thought that it was so hard to find someone in need
of my aid and energy. I decided that if I could not manage to find
the place where I would be useful, that meant it was not my cup
of tea. In other words, I surrendered.
One day, at the end of December, a friend of mine came to
see me and she got a telephone call just about midnight. She got
beside herself and in response to my question explained that her
sister together with her fellow-students visited a temporary ani-
mal shelter where 82 dogs were kept. And since they were miss-
ing some volunteers, they did not have time to clean the snow
from roof of the indoor cages, so the constructions failed to hold
the weight of the snow and collapsed. They managed to get the
dogs out of there transferring them to outdoor cages, but they
needed help to dig out the indoor cages next morning.
The temperature remained at minus 45 Celsius for 3 days al-
ready (which is normal for Siberia), but the dogs could have got
their paws frostbitten. My decision was prompt and predictable.
I called all my employees and asked for help. In the morning half
of my team stood at the doorway of the restaurant waiting for in-
structions. 5 hours later we completely dug out 14 indoor cages,
and the next day we put a new, solid and insulated roof. Since
then, we have become regular volunteers at this temporary ani-
mal shelter. We have reconstructed all the cages, and provided 3
trucks of firewood. And last week we saved 12 puppies from star-
vation, got them transferred to the temporary shelter, and now
are looking for new foster-parents for the little guys.