Many people may not be aware of the behind scenes work done by the many volunteers who give their spare time to Carolina Border Collie Rescue. The numerous phone calls and e-mails from folks who expect immediate attention, and assistance...

Rescue operations require the total dedication of volunteers in order to exist. We do it out of love for the breed and a dedication to help eradicate the widespread over population of dogs. And, we do it along with full time jobs, family responsibilities, and our own pets that need care and attention.

CBCR has volunteers who serve in all capacities from home visits, manning booths, answering emails, evaluating dogs, taking pictures of dogs, to fostering. There is no job more important than another. However without foster homes, it would be impossible to operate our rescue group. Very few rescue groups nationwide, breed-specific or mixed breed, have kennels available to house dogs waiting for placement. CBCR relies fully on their outstanding foster homes to do this for us. In exchange, they have the satisfaction of knowing that their efforts to provide a positive environment, gives each fostered BC a new chance at a forever home.

Fostering is not the only way you can help CBCR in their rescue efforts. We need people all over North Carolina to do home visits evaluating potential adopters. Learning to match special dogs with approved homes is as important as fostering. Other volunteers evaluate dogs that are being relinquished by their owners, or found in shelters. This requires being able to temperament test dogs, understanding border collies, and recognizing what dogs are adoptable. Certain volunteers help by keep tracking
which dogs are waiting for foster care, what homes need home evaluations, which homes are best for certain types of dogs. These same volunteers share this information with the volunteer list to make the actual adoptions take place.

And the list of jobs goes on! We also need people who can work at our table during events where we do fundraising. (Which is critical to paying the vet bills incurred with each dog that comes into our program.) CBCR can be seen at flyball and agility tournaments, sheep dog trials, and other pet related events. Then there is the webmaster who keeps information updated in between her responsibilities, a treasurer who monitors all of the cash flow, board members who make 'final calls' on business issues, and a lot of other folks who can not be thanked enough.

But you wanna know the secret? We all do one, or more these tasks for two reasons: 1) each of us truly loves our border collies and 2) there are too many dogs and not enough volunteers to save them all. But we try....one by one. It is not the size of the job but the impact of what you do. Sometimes there are as many as 7 different people involved with the placement of a single dog. Not one link in that chain is expendable.

Barbara F. Thompson