Please help German Shepherds! They need you and so do we. Here’s a list of tasks we’d love more volunteers to help us with.

Transporting dogs

If you have a car you can transport in, and are willing to help us by transporting dogs, we’d love to hear from you! We need people to pick up dogs when they come in to us, and take them to kennels, or take them from the kennels to the vets and back again.

Visiting dogs in Kennels

Help is welcome – we’d love to have more volunteers who will help by visiting German Shepherds in their kennels. Grooming, playing with them, stroking & walking them are all helpful – and if you have any feedback on the dogs after your visit, we’d love to hear it so that we can add it to the dog’s profile on our web site.

Dog walking

We always need volunteers to come and help us walk our German Shepherds; we have dogs at kennels both in Guildford & Woldingham.

Fostering

We have a need for two sorts of fosterers. You need to be German Shepherd savvy for either...

We need temporary fosterers, who will take in a dog that’s available for re-homing, and care for him or her while the dog is waiting for his or her forever home. We would welcome your feedback as to the dog’s likes, dislikes, needs, behaviour problems – and yes, we get some pretty demanding dogs in so we’re always looking for experienced people who are willing to get involved with dogs such as these. Dogs in temporary foster homes are advertised on the web site.

We also need long term fosterers to care for dogs who have a medical condition. Vigil GSD would pay the dog’s vet and food bills.

Training advice/Behavioural advice

We need people who have experience & qualifications in giving training advice & behavioural advice.

Please contact one of the Trustees, if this aspect of helping is of interest to you.

Home-checking

We would welcome volunteers who will help us by visiting the homes of prospective German Shepherd owners to do a home-check.

When a request for a home-check in your area comes in, we’ll give you a call and ask you to arrange to visit that potential home.

At the home-check, you run through a questionnaire with the would-be owners to help assess whether they would be suitable owners for any of our dogs. We will give you full advice on what to look for when homechecking.

After a home check you let us know how you got on. If there are problems with the potential home we ask you not to fail the home but let us have the full details and the trustees will contact the home and explain the situation so that you are not put in the difficult position of being the person who disappoints someone who lives near to you.

Fundraising

On average, it costs £8 a night to keep a dog in kennels – and there’s the cost also of vets fees, micro-chipping, transporting dogs, insurance for our charity – so it all adds up. Any fundraising you can do would be gratefully received

Attending shows to help out on our stands

Vigil attend a number of shows during the year to raise awareness of our charity and also to bring in much needed funds. If you’re willing to come along to any of these shows and lend a hand, we’d love to hear from you.

Please get in touch and offer your help – our dogs would really appreciate a helping hand.