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Join our animal shelter and help us take care of our lovely dogs!

5.0
(10 reviews)10

The experience

In keeping with our core goal of providing the best possible care for our rescue dogs, volunteers help us with: dog feeding and watering, yard cleaning, dog walking, dog socialisation (e.g. patting puppies) and, if possible, some basic building/maintenance; gardening ( weeding).

In return, a massive oversupply of joyful dog love is guaranteed.

We require a minimum stay of 4 weeks stay.
Training/ getting to know the activities takes 3-4 weeks.

What you offer

32 hours of help per week

Cleaning: Help clean the kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and common areas.

Animal Care: Help look after and take care of animals.

Building & Repairing: Help with a wide range of repairs or building.

What you get

3 days off per week

Shared Dorm: You will have a bed in a shared room, which means you will share the same room with other travelers.

Breakfast: You are entitled to a free breakfast, every day of your stay.

Lunch: You are entitled to a free lunch, every day of your stay.

Dinner: You are entitled to a free dinner, every day of your stay.

Free Laundry: You can use our laundry room freely.

Get free drinks or beverages.: Drink up! Get free and tasty drinks for yourself.

Use our equipped kitchen: Feel free to use our kitchen and make your own delicious food.

Fast Internet Access: High-speed internet for you to work remotely

Requirements

Intermediate English

Between 18 and 40 years old

Welcomes solo volunteers, couples, and partners of volunteers

What's not included

Flights, Travel Insurance, Internal Transportation and Visa

Program Details

We run the largest open-yard, no-cage dog sanctuary in Western Bulgaria (by area = 27,000 m2) with 140 dogs currently.

Apart from temporary yards for puppies or socialisation, our yards range in size from 240 m2 to 1,500 m2 and visitors to our facility are usually amazed by how friendly, socialised and emotionally/physically healthy our dogs are.

While we work hard on finding their forever homes through adoption, our dogs live in large yards (see our pics), get excellent medical care from our 2 vets and on-site vet clinic plus high quality food and constant socialisation with people through walks with staff, volunteerism and company teambuildings here.

In short, our sanctuary was built as a living prototype for how all animal shelters should be, all over the world in the future - this is the main philosophical objective of our foundation and sanctuary.

Activities & Shift

Volunteers help us with:
- poo picking, dog feeding and watering, dog walking, dog socialisation (e.g. patting puppies, rolling with dogs), some basic building/maintenance work and gardening (weeding, tree watering).
- 4 days in the shelter / 3 days off ( not always in a row)
- live in Sofia/ work outside Sofia
- COMMUTE involves walking, tram and train trip and up to 3 hrs round trip.
- weekly allowance for travel and food
- there is a lovable foster dog in the flat- volunteers share between themselves his walks and feeding.
- the accommodation must be kept clean and tidy by the volunteers
- suitable ONLY for people who truly appreciate what we stand for, what we have achieved, love dogs, sincerely want to help and give the cause 4 weeks of their time.

Rules

For your SAFETY and our dogs’ SAFETY, the main rules for volunteers and visitors to our site are:

1. You MUST sign our waiver document BEFORE going anywhere on the site here.

2. NEVER let a dog escape from a yard, when entering or leaving a yard (call loudly for help IMMEDIATELY if this happens) – there are homeless dogs in the area nearby that will not tolerate an unknown dog entering their territory.

After entering or leaving a yard, ALWAYS shake the gate to make sure that the latch of the gate is SECURE.

3. Do NOT enter a yard with a WARNING sign on the front gate.

4. Treats can trigger FIGHTS between dogs. Please do NOT NOT NOT give the dogs treats when other dogs are present.

5. If you are not confident entering a yard or walking a dog on a leash, do NOT enter a yard UNLESS one of our friendly staff is with you.