By Lalinda De La Fuente

Love, peace and greyhounds. This is the motto for Friends of Greyhounds in Miami, Fla. They are currently seeking volunteers for anything and everything. If you live in this area and truly want to help some animals, consider volunteering for this wonderful rescue. Here is their call for help.

Help Wanted. . . Experience of a lifetime

Hard workers needed immediately for disgusting job that doesn’t pay anything but is incredibly rewarding..

I cannot go into a lot of detail here but we now have charge of 61 greyhounds that are filthy, sick, depressed and loaded with ticks. If you’ve ever wanted to get into real rescue and really make a difference to a dog, now is your opportunity.

Our Saturday (4/19) BBQ, Birthday party & dogwash will be handled as scheduled. Behind the scenes we’ll be working with our vet and doing paperwork and identification things that need to be in place first. But we have Sunday, Monday and Tuesday (4/20 – 22) to wash and pick hundreds of ticks off of 61 dogs. On Wednesday the state and County inspectors will re- inspect. If we’ve done a good job, we’ll be allowed to retain custody of the dogs to further transition them to adoption (probably by sharing them with other greyhound groups around the state). If not, they will most likely take the one way trip to Miami Dade Animal Control.

This race kennel has fallen on bad times and the owner had good intentions but got in over his head. Check your politics at the door because this week is all about making progress with the dogs themselves. This situation is not for idle gossip that might inflame the enforcement people. Remember, this is all about THE DOGS.

We’ll need teams of hard-working greyhound people starting at 10 AM on Sunday and 9 AM on Monday and Tuesday. Work will be done at Florida Kennels where our regular kennel full of clean, happy, healthy dogs is while they wait for adoption. We figure that each dog will take a team of two or three people a couple hours to clean up. We may have to work on them a whle and then let them rest (switch off to another dog) before we start again.

We’ll have some cold drinks available and should have enough dog washing supplies. Please plan on staying at least 4 hours if you are coming for the day. Less than that means we spend too high a percentage of our time getting you oriented. You MUST have called me to say you are coming or you will not be allowed onto the property. Please, no kids, no other dogs unless you can park them in the office kennels.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for an amazing rescue experience you will NOT forget as you help a dog transition from the worst pits of racing life . . . (hopefully) . . . into a healthy, caring environment to go on to a loving adoption home. Folks, this is grueling work and it doesn’t get any better for your karma than this.

Please call me if you can help out. Don’t leave a message, just call another number. I know we have a lot of great volunteers and hard workers out there but I also know that weekdays can be a problem. Please try to come. We’re going to need a whole lot of people to do this thing right. Friends and neighbors? You Betcha!

If you can’t come, donations and good thoughts for these babies will be appreciated.

Love, Peace & Greyhounds,
Michelle, 954-578-0072 or 954-937-9663

Supplies we could probably use more of:
* Paper towels
* Frontline
* Alcohol
* Vinyl or Latex Gloves
* Towels
* Tweezers
* laundry baskets
* Carpets (30" x 40") pieces of new carpet
* Baby wipes (for dog ears & our hands)

Things to make your volunteer day easier:
* change of clothes to ride home in
* closed toed shoes
* low stool