Animals. That’s what it’s all about.
At the Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter everything – and I mean literally everything – we do comes back to our animals.
Everyone’s job, every volunteer’s hours, every moment at CVAS is done so we can help a four-legged friend.
I joke with people and tell them I have more than 100 four-legged bosses at any given time. And it’s true. We all work for them.
Everything I write and say and all the businesses I work with that help us get the word out do so for our animals.
Our adoption counselor works daily to match people up with the right pet and create our happy endings, and she’s amazing at it.
Our animal care technicians come in every day – regardless of what could be going on in their own lives – and clean and medicate and love on the furry friends in our kennels.
Our receptionist answers calls, works with people who find strays or need to surrender a pet, coordinates our spay and neuter clinic, does paperwork for incoming animals and helps people figure out what to do with the animals they find or the ones in their home.
Our shelter manager schedules surgeries, puts paperwork together for the state, puts our animals into the online search engines to help them find homes, coordinates all the small pets that come in and determines the proper care for the animals coming into the shelter. She knows just about every animal in here and helps each and every one of them every day.
We have a senior animal care technician who is the heart of this organization. She’s been here longer than anyone and can do things with animals I’ve never seen a human able to do. She’s mother to every one of us, both two-legged and four-legged, and we all love her.
Our office manager deposits the money that is donated to CVAS and helps keep track of the daily revenue numbers.
Our director of development works hard to help the future of this organization by making sure we have the income needed to exist well into the future.
Our executive director handles the books and emails and public relations and events and emergency calls for animals and pretty much every aspect of this organization. She can often be found running through the halls, chasing down the latest item on her to-do list, and we are incredibly lucky to have her.
Our board of directors – for no money at all – sets policies and volunteers at our thrift store and Petsmart and helps with all kinds of fund raisers. They’re a great group of people who work hard for this organization.
Our volunteers walk our dogs, help us with events, greet visitors, help with paperwork, socialize our cats and clean at Petco and Petsmart.
Every single person on that list does what they do for the animals. Every. Single. One.
Even if their job doesn’t directly deal with the four-legged babies, their efforts will affect them.
The Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter fights for, cares for and loves our four-legged babies. We have since our inception when we were nothing but a post office box and a lot of caring humans – and we will continue to do so as long as there are animals that need us.
And I, for one, am incredibly proud to be even a small part of that.
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Jennifer Vanderau is the public relations coordinator for the Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter and can be reached at cvascomm@cvas-pets.org. The shelter accepts both monetary and pet supply donations. For more information, readers may call the shelter at 717-263-5791 or visit the website www.cvas-pets.org. CVAS also operates a thrift store in Chambersburg. Readers may help support the animals at the shelter by donating to or shopping at the store..
