Mandurah's K9 Rescue Group on the hunt for help

“Without them we just wouldn’t be there – plain and simple,” K9 Rescue president Carol Carter said.

The charity invited their sponsors to the Nambellup property for a thank you morning tea and tour of the kennels. 

But despite all their generosity, Ms Carter said more help was always needed. 

Ms Carter said the shelter had more than 100 volunteers on the books but they were always in need of more. 

“If they were all here at the same time that would be great, but they're not,” she said. 

“Some of them come to work from the dole, some come because they're retired, some come because they don't like people, we get them from all over. And then people get jobs and they leave.”

Ms Carter said even though they had set shifts, they also tried to accommodate when volunteers can come in. 

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“So we have people from 16 – that's the youngest we can have for insurance reasons – and I think some of our oldest are nearly 80,” she said.  

“There are so many different aspects of volunteering. If they can't walk the dogs, there's fundraising, making things for K9 like coats, bandannas, quilts and then we've got the kennels, and people who do the laundry.

“We're currently looking for a volunteer cleaner because we all clean-up after and as you can imagine, sometimes you don't have time to do that.

“And we're looking for someone to tend to the grounds.”

Fostering a dog is not a life sentence. 

That is the message K9 Rescue Group’s foster care coordinator Michelle Golenya wants people to know. 

The volunteer – who was appointed into the role earlier this year – is on a mission to revitalise the charity’s foster program.

Mrs Golenya said people didn’t realise that fostering a dog didn’t have to be an extended period of time, and certainly didn’t involve the carer having to fork out money for the dog. 

“We'll have a chat about what kind of dog you're looking for; what your terms are because we accommodate the foster carer,” she said.

“We can't expect you to do something that you're house isn't capable of, and what you're not capable of.

“If you want  a dog once every weekend, we've got a lot of long-term dogs that would love to go out every so often to someone's home for a weekend. 

“We help with food, medication - all of that - so your out of pocket expenses apart from maybe fancy treats or outings, we take care of it all.”

Mrs Golenya said foster carers get 24/7 support when they have the dog and if the pairing doesn’t work out, someone from K9 would come and pick up the dog. 

For more information about K9 Rescue Group call 9581 9005 or go to k9dogrescue.org.au