Volunteer

Animal Care Volunteering

Maricopa County Animal Care and Control is proudly the Number 1 lifesaving open-admission shelter in the Valley. The generous support of our volunteer force has made this possible. Volunteers provide care for our homeless animals from walking dogs to matching a family with their new kitten. It's easy to become a volunteer:

Complete and submit this Online Volunteer Application
Watch the Online Orientation (Below)
Volunteer Opportunity Locations
Attend Buddy Day (Hands On training opportunity - scheduled individually)
Volunteers must be at least 15 years of age

Volunteer Job Descriptions

Adoption Counselor: Provide great customer service by facilitating meetings between potential adopters and pets.
Kennel Assistant: Seeing to the needs of the animals, which includes spot cleaning, walking/socializing, watering and providing bedding.
Petite Pet Project: Taking care of the small dogs in our shelter. This is where our small dogs go who are not quite ready for adoption, but will be in the future with your help.
Photographer: Making sure all animals have a quality photograph on their file so that our online customers can easily find the pet they're looking for and lost animals can be reunited with their owners.
Groomer: Washing, trimming coats and nails. Some tools are provided, but may need some of your own.
Clinic Assistant: Assisting vet techs by cleaning kennels, laundry, assisting in recovery, returning animals to their kennels and assisting in other tasks.
Event Assistant: Loading animals onto adoption vehicles, meeting at event sites to walk dogs and assist in adoptions, returning dogs to kennels after events, cleaning vehicles.
Day Foster: Take one of our dogs out for a day, a half day or just a couple of hours for a much-needed break from the shelter.
Laundry and Blanket Helpers: Depending on the time of year, our animals need blankets for warmth and comfort, which generates a lot of laundry. This is a perfect job for those folks who might not be suited to working directly with animals. Also, gather and/or sew blankets and pillows for our animals. Very little training commitment is required for this job duty.

Volunteer Time Requirements

Training: Training will take approximately 6-8 hours, depending on the capacity in which you would like to volunteer. This can be spread out over 2-3 visits, or most of it can be completed in one day, depending upon your scheduling needs.
Volunteering: We ask for a minimum of 8 hours per month. This can be 2 shifts of 4 hours, or 4 shifts of 2 hours, or anything else. We are completely flexible. If your schedule demands much from you, we will happily accept fewer hours, as long as you are able to make it in every month. Volunteer hours are from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the shelter locations.

Online Orientation

Please view the following videos (click links). Once finished, email Volunteer Manager Misty Weaver at MistyWeaver@mail.maricopa.gov and she will set you up an on-boarding (orientation) date; after that, you will be assigned to shadow a staff member or senior volunteer.