As the summer temperatures increase, the number of volunteers available to walk dogs at the Humane Society of Sedona decreases.

“Being the kind of seasonal town that we are, you know, we have a lot of snowbirds,” volunteer coordinator Deb Haynes said, estimating they lose a quarter to a third of their volunteers over the summer. “And this time of the year, they takeflight, and they head back to their northern homes. Because the temperatures get a little bit warmer here for them. And so they take off, and then they’re not back usually till October. So we have a few months where our local volunteer pool gets a little bit smaller. Yet we still have all the dogs and the cats that need help.”

Volunteer dog walkers are required to watch a 45-minute online orientation video followed by two hour-long videos.

“[The dogs] may not know how to walk on a leash; they could be reactive simply to the fact that there’s trees blowing in the wind,” Haynes said. “What we do with the trainings is, people learn all the different dog behaviors that they will come across … Then once they complete that, they come into the shelter. I schedule them for two training shifts. So they come in for their shift, and they will be with either a staff member or one of our volunteer trainers … They can help them through all the steps and make sure that they remember all the things that you’re supposed to do, and then they’re on their own. And the dog shifts are two hours, that’s it.”

“We have a program called Park Ranger because we have that big, beautiful dog park here on our property, [but] we have dogs that might be just too big, for somebody to walk,” Haynes said. “Park Ranger is, the volunteer goes out to the park, they check in with us, they go into the park, we bring the dogs to them. And they literally get to hang out at the picnic table and throw balls and toys and interact with the dogs in a dog park-like setting.”

The HSS also offers a dog off-site program that allows volunteers to check out a dog while running errands, hiking or staying at home. The time commitment is a minimum of one two hour shift a week with a maximum of three shifts a week.

“Because there’s a thing that’s called compassion fatigue,” Haynes said. “So many people feel like, ‘Oh, I could never, never volunteer there, all those animals, my heart just breaks, I want to take them all home.’ And I think we all felt like that when maybe first started volunteering … But once you go through the training, and you are here and you kind of understand the bigger picture, and what your role in that which is really kind of being a guardian and an advocate for the animals, you realize that you’re there to just provide comfort and compassion towards them and help them get out of the shelter.”

Ninety percent of the shelter’s operations are run by volunteers.

“What I find with every single volunteer that comes through those doors and takes the dog out … it brings them so much joy, the smiles on our volunteers faces, they feel like they’re part of the solution,” Haynes said.

“It gives you a sense of purpose … I had a volunteer in tears the other day because she was kind of lost and needing to find her purpose again, she moved here not too long ago and and had some physical ailments, and I told her about the park ranger program. Tears because she felt like it finally connected her.”

For more information, visit humanesocietyofsedona.org or contact Haynes at (928) 399-7418.