Do you love animals but you don’t know how to help animals in need? Or maybe you can’t afford to donate to charities on a regular basis and actually would love to adopt all the staffies but can’t afford the money or the space to even have one? Well, worry no more! I have thought of a few ways that either require no money, little money or just your time and will help a variety of animals! Here we go…
- If you have a reasonable amount of time, you could volunteer with your local animal rescue. Large companies eg: Dogs Trust have an application process similar to job applications and require you to explain why you want to do it etc. That doesn’t mean that a person with no experience won’t get chosen to do it. Companies like that need all the volunteers they can get and as long as you can display a passion or a willingness to learn, they’re likely to accept you. Others won’t have any application process and are happy for near enough anyone to start working straight away. Hours obviously vary, for example Dogs Trust ask for four-hour shifts and often that’s once a week, but can be more regular if you choose so, but other companies may want you to work a full day, whilst others may only want volunteers for fundraising…which brings me to my next point!
- If you have a little bit of time, such as a weekend or even just one day, you could help a rescue or charity with a fundraising day. If you just ring them, they’ll be more than happy to tell you if you’re needed and when it is etc. On the other hand, you could do something completely on your own! You could do a sponsored silence, run, walk or even a cake or car boot sale to raise money for your chosen cause!
- If you want to rescue animals directly but have very little space or time to spend with a rescue dog/cat, there are other options. Firstly, retired racing greyhounds make perfect little-time dogs because they take very little walking, don’t tend to destroy things at home and are very happy to just snuggle up all day and sleep. I will warn you though; be prepared to share your sofa! Check out British Greyhound Protection and the Retired Greyhound Trust websites for more detail if you’re interested. If not, there are plenty of mice/rats which need rescuing from people who will live-feed them to pet reptiles without thinking of the mouse/rat as an animal itself. You can often find rescue rodents at Pets At Home in their “Support Adoption” area of the store where you can find guinea pigs, rabbits, gerbils, hamsters and any other rodent which might have come from situations like hoarders, accidental breeders, abandonments etc. So there are ways to adopt pets which take up very little space, time and money.
- If you do have some money to spare but don’t want to commit to a sponsorship or regular donations, why not attend a fundraising day yourself and buy some things which you/your family can enjoy but also help animals in need? You could also visit websites which donate their profits to charities such as WWF or the RSPCA store.
- If you have some spare money or if you have some spare items (blankets, old toys, balls/dog toys etc.), you could donate things like that to your local rescue as they could either be used for the animals there or sold in charity shops to give money to the rescue centre. If you’re a relatively skilled baker, you could try baking some dog treats yourself! There are plenty of recipes online and it’s easy to find things which will benefit dogs such as turmeric biscuits (good for joints) or liver cake, which can easily be adapted to include cheese as well as other meats/types of offal. However, some rescues won’t take homemade treats because in the past ‘people’ have taken in homemade treats containing blades and types of poisons to ‘cull’ the dogs so some may be a bit cautious, so do always check first!
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