HOT LAB RESCUE VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

There are many ways to help Heart of Texas Lab Rescue and we realize that some of us have more time to help than others! Below are some of the ways that you can help! We look forward to hearing from you!

• Fostering: Foster families are one of our most important assets at HOTLR. Foster families are needed to provide temporary homes for the labs that we take into the program. The more foster homes that we have, the more labs we can save! Short-term/Emergency Fostering: Temporary and/or emergency foster homes will be needed during times of transition and/or when foster families need temporary boarding. This will provide financial help to foster families that are already doing SO much for our organization.
• Monthly Foster/Adoption Events (Meet & Greet): We will coordinate monthly events where potential adopters may meet our labs in rescue. Families who are currently fostering will bring their lab to meet potential adopters who are scheduled to come on that day.o Not all foster families will be available 100% of the time to attend, so we would need a volunteer to "sponsor" that lab for the day (i.e. pick up the dog from the foster home, bring it to the event, and then return it to the foster home). We are also in need of volunteers to host Meet & Greets at their home (back yard or in a barn due to inclement weather). Our only request is that you have your dogs in the house while the Meet & Greet is in progress.
• Traffice Control: at Meet and Greets, we are often showing dogs to more than one group of applicants. It is helpful to have additional volunteers to assist in particular with dog control.
• Phone Duty: Phone Duty is set up on a weekly rotation (sign up for this on monthly Topica schedule). This duty consists of obtaining messages on our HOTLR answering machine and returning phone calls to answer questions or get the caller to the correct person within our organization for assistance; a weekly summary is provided to the board via email and a manual is provided to assist you!
• Home Studies: This type of volunteer goes to the home of a potential foster family or adopter and conducts a study of the home and yard to ensure that this would be a suitable forever home or temporary home for one of our labs. Training will be provided (we would have you shadow one of our experienced volunteers to learn the ropes)! Home Studies are always done in pairs, so we will need two volunteers for every Home Study we conduct.
• Transportation: Volunteers will be needed to help transport our labs to and from foster homes, forever homes, the vet, or shelters. Out-of-town volunteers can also help in this way; ex. if we need to transport a lab to Houston, it helps when one of our volunteers in Houston can meet us half way and then deliver the lab to its destination. HOTLR dog are required to travel in a crate in your vehicle.
• Financial Sponsorships: Occasionally we take a lab into our program, but we don't have a foster home available (right away); in this instance, we must board this lab until we have a home available. All expenses are paid by HOTLR; but wouldn't it be great if we had a volunteer to financially sponsor rescue dogs in this way? This is a great way for those who want to help, but do not have the time to help in any other way! Financial Sponsors will receive "updates" on the sponsored dog on a regular basis.
• Events/ Raising Awareness/ Fund Raisers: Different events that HOTLR attends will require volunteers to come and assist with dog handling, greeting people and spreading the word about HOTLR. For example, at our most recent Georgetown Pet Expo, we had four of our volunteers show up to help handle dogs and to hand out literature and talk to people who came by our booth about who we are.
• Shelter Checks: We will need volunteers to check the local shelters on a regular basis for labs that we could potentially take into our program.
• Post-Adoption Case Worker: After we place a dog in a forever home, we would like to have a volunteer to contact the family, by phone, at three different points after the dog has been in their home for a while (i.e. follow up at two weeks, one month, and two months) to ensure that all is going well and to let HOTLR know how our lab is doing in his/her new home!
• Phone Interviews: We need volunteers to call both foster and adoption applicants to phone screen them. We will train you on how to do this. We also follow up with our volunteers on these, so you can be comfortable with your information.

All of our volunteers are very much appreciated! Please feel free to contact Doug Mitchell if you have any questions about how you can help or if you would like to become involved in any of the above-mentioned activities. A database of those volunteers who are interested in specific activities will be maintained so that we can contact you if anything comes up that you may be interested in!

Thanks again for all that you do for HOTLR!