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Volunteer

Get Involved to Help Us Save Lives

Volunteer

Homeward Trails has rescued tens of thousands of animals through an amazing network of dedicated volunteers who perform a variety of lifesaving tasks. Volunteers are critical to our success. We could not do what we do without our wonderful volunteers!

You will find a number of opportunities that allow you to participate in a meaningful way with the flexibility to participate as your schedule allows. Please note that most of our volunteer opportunities require volunteers to be over 18 years of age. If you are under 18 and looking to help out please refer to our Youth Volunteers page.

Volunteer Opportunities 

Help us with filing, scanning, data entry, and all the other tasks that help us keep our operation going! Contact volunteer@homewardtrails.org.
Our Adoption Center houses up to 60 adoptable dogs and is located in Fairfax Station, VA. Help our staff care for, socialize, and clean up after our resident dogs. You can also volunteer to take a dog on aT ails Out adventure or hang with a dog in our Peace Out rooms. We have hours available 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Contact center meghanh@homewardtrails.org.
Spend time on the weekends at the Adoption Center helping match adopters with their new furry friends. Adoption Counselors screen adopters and finalize adoptions — a fun and rewarding job!
Join our dynamic cat and dog adoption teams and help us save more animals by screening adoption applications or assisting our Adoption Coordinators by checking vet and rental references!
Support adoption and special fundraising events throughout the year. To check out some of our upcoming events, visit our Events Page. We also need Event Coordinators to help run our cat and dog adoption events.
Provide a temporary home for a rescued animal until an adoptive home is secured. If you’re interested in fostering, please check out our Foster Program.
Help us raise needed funds to keep going! There are plenty of ways to support our fundraising efforts such as:
  • Organize an office donation drive.
  • Accept donations in lieu of gifts for birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries.
  • Host an event at your home, at your favorite bar, at your church—anywhere you enjoy spending time.
  • Hold a bake sale.
  • Create an online giving page (these are easy to make on Facebook!).
Ask us about all the different ways you can help raise needed funds for our animals. Contact donate@homewardtrails.org.
We love large groups of volunteers who can help us accomplish big projects at the Homeward Trails Adoption Center located in Fairfax Station, VA. If you would like to schedule a volunteer project for your office of civic organization, please contact rebeccag@homewardtrails.org.
Meow Palace is our temporary cageless home for kitties located in Fairfax Station! Help socialize, cuddle & clean up after our resident adoptable cats. Morning and evening shifts are available 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Contact kelseym@homewardtrails.org.
Enrich the life of a shelter dog (and maybe yours too)! Our Peace Out Rooms are equipped with comfy couches, chairs, rugs, TVs and desks or you to come and chill, study, nap, meditate, cuddle with a pup or just escape for an hour or two with one of our awesome dogs who can also use a little PEACE in their lives. Learn more about the program here.
This is a super fun volunteer opportunity that will save lives. Are you traveling to Puerto Rico for work or fun? Contact us and bring a puppy or kitten back with you. It's easy and will cost you nothing. Literally! We will provide you with all the details you need. Contact intake@homewardtrails.org.
HT puppy parties offer puppy happiness to hosts, vital socialization for our pups and raise vital funds for our sick and injured animals. To learn more and volunteer, contact puppyparty@homewardtrails.org
TAILS OUT! is our dog and human enrichment program to get our Adoption Center dogs out and about into the community and your homes to have some FUN while they patiently await their adoptive homes. Learn more about the program here.
Drive animals from our shelter partners, to and from adoption events, and medical appointments. Contact volunteer@homewardtrails.org
We are contacted every day by amazing young people who care about animals and want to help and we have many opportunities for you to get involved! Here are a few ideas of how you can help. For more information please contact homershelpers@homewardtrails.org
If you have an idea for volunteering, share it with us! We love new ideas. Contact volunteer@homewardtrails.org.

Volunteer Sign Up Form

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More News from the Trail!

  • Saving 200 Lives – Our Biggest Event Ever!

    We are SAVING 200 LIVES THIS WEEK!!  Our biggest event ever! This time next week we have TWO Trails UP teams hitting the roads to save lives in this unprecedented effort! And we need your support to make it happen. We are sooo excited!! And to make it more fun for everyone, this effort is part of our Quarterly Raffle. For each $100 donor, we pick one winner at random to win a $350 Amazon gift card, a custom dog or cat goody basket and 2 free tickets to our Chili Bingo event in the fall – winner to be chosen as soon as we meet our $ goal. 120 DOGS WILL BE STERILIZED….. “I love this dog that wandered up to my house. But I’ve got a female dog inside and this dog is not neutered. The cost of getting him neutered is more than I can afford. But I hate to take him to the shelter. So for now I have to keep him chained up. If I can get him neutered and vaccinated then he can live indoors with us. I would love for him to be a real part of our family.” – Mr. Jenkell For the first time ever, Homeward Trails has organized a 120-dog spay/neuter event in Galax, VA, one of our most favorite Trails UP communities. We will be traveling to Galax where we have been working for months to secure 120 dogs who desperately need neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. These animals are loved but have owners who simply cannot afford their surgery. Without this event many would face becoming pregnant and ending up in the local shelter with puppies. Or possibly facing a life on a chain. This is no way for a family to live.  As much of our Trails UP spay/neuter efforts have focused on cats due transport options and surgical availability, our hearts have been hurting as we see the shelters filling up with dogs & puppies and so many people desperately wanting to get their dogs neutered. And so we have been working overtime to put together this major event. We will be partnering with several groups to bring a mobile unit to Galax and bring these lifesaving and lifechanging services to these dogs. We cannot WAIT. Every dog will be neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. And we hope to send all home with dog food, flea/tick meds and for those who need it – a dog house! The cost to us for this event comes to $120/dog  – as we are providing these services totally free to the community. PLEASE consider sponsoring a dog for this event and allowing us to truly change the life of a dog and the people who love him/her. A donation of any amount will truly make a difference! 80 CATS WILL BE STERILIZED The second half of our Trails UP team will be heading to Buchanan County to do free spay/neuter and Trap-Neuter-Return for 80 cats. The number of cat lives that will be saved from preventing unwanted kittens is often totally hard to digest. It’s HUGE. Just last month, we spayed almost 25 early pregnant cats – you can see how many lives that saved through prevention. It also means the world to the human caretakers of these kitties who so often struggle to feed their own families let alone the dozens of cats they care for. We will spend 5 days in the field working with community members in this very under-resourced communities. We will set traps in trailer parks, in yards and barns, on decks and in gardens – wherever we can – to get 80 cats sterilized, vaccinated and microchipped.    This will require not only 36 hours of trapping but more than 10 additional hours of driving to and from our surgical clinic. Our van will be loaded up with 80 cats (the very most we can fit) to make the 3.5 hour one-way trip to the surgical center. This is a huge undertaking each time we do it. But with no affordable large-scale spay/neuter clinics close by, we take what we can get. Our team is so dedicated! And so over a short period of just 5 days, we will sterilize, vaccinate and microchip 200 animals in two separate but equally under-resourced communities. And we are SO EXCITED. Please sponsor a dog or cat at just $100 and you can be a winner of a $350 Amazon gift card, a custom dog or cat goody basket and 2 free tickets to our Chili Bingo event in the fall – winner to be chosen as soon as we meet our $ goal.

  • Helping Happy Hounds – Fee Waived Adoptions for All Hounds

    As you may or may not know, Virginia animal shelters are filled with Hounds. These amazing dogs are most often discarded by callous hunters, found starving wandering the countryside. Many never make it as hunters and are then tied up to chains or left along the side of the road like old furniture. A good number of them do not make it out of shelters alive.But these dogs – like all dogs – are amazing and worthy of families. We just cannot get them families fast enough to stop them from dying in our shelters when there is no more space.And so we are trying something new here. ALL HOUND DOGS ADOPTED FROM HOMEWARD TRAILS WILL BE FREE. Yes, we are WAIVING ADOPTION FEES for Hounds for the foreseeable future.We hope that will entice well-matched applicants to consider a Hound now. Use the money you save on training, treats, toys.We think all dogs are worthy. But the reality is that some take extra incentives. Some have more barriers to getting adopted. And the result is well, more end up dying. And no – this does NOT mean we are just giving dogs away. All applicants will still go through our application/screening process to ensure good homes. This is just us trying to save more dogs by eliminating one more barrier to adoption. And hey, Hound lovers can use all the extra money they can get to buy treats, right?Help us help these Hounds. Our program Helping Happy Hounds is live NOW. Let’s save some lives!

More News from the Trail!

  • Saving 200 Lives – Our Biggest Event Ever!

    We are SAVING 200 LIVES THIS WEEK!!  Our biggest event ever! This time next week we have TWO Trails UP teams hitting the roads to save lives in this unprecedented effort! And we need your support to make it happen. We are sooo excited!! And to make it more fun for everyone, this effort is part of our Quarterly Raffle. For each $100 donor, we pick one winner at random to win a $350 Amazon gift card, a custom dog or cat goody basket and 2 free tickets to our Chili Bingo event in the fall – winner to be chosen as soon as we meet our $ goal. 120 DOGS WILL BE STERILIZED….. “I love this dog that wandered up to my house. But I’ve got a female dog inside and this dog is not neutered. The cost of getting him neutered is more than I can afford. But I hate to take him to the shelter. So for now I have to keep him chained up. If I can get him neutered and vaccinated then he can live indoors with us. I would love for him to be a real part of our family.” – Mr. Jenkell For the first time ever, Homeward Trails has organized a 120-dog spay/neuter event in Galax, VA, one of our most favorite Trails UP communities. We will be traveling to Galax where we have been working for months to secure 120 dogs who desperately need neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. These animals are loved but have owners who simply cannot afford their surgery. Without this event many would face becoming pregnant and ending up in the local shelter with puppies. Or possibly facing a life on a chain. This is no way for a family to live.  As much of our Trails UP spay/neuter efforts have focused on cats due transport options and surgical availability, our hearts have been hurting as we see the shelters filling up with dogs & puppies and so many people desperately wanting to get their dogs neutered. And so we have been working overtime to put together this major event. We will be partnering with several groups to bring a mobile unit to Galax and bring these lifesaving and lifechanging services to these dogs. We cannot WAIT. Every dog will be neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. And we hope to send all home with dog food, flea/tick meds and for those who need it – a dog house! The cost to us for this event comes to $120/dog  – as we are providing these services totally free to the community. PLEASE consider sponsoring a dog for this event and allowing us to truly change the life of a dog and the people who love him/her. A donation of any amount will truly make a difference! 80 CATS WILL BE STERILIZED The second half of our Trails UP team will be heading to Buchanan County to do free spay/neuter and Trap-Neuter-Return for 80 cats. The number of cat lives that will be saved from preventing unwanted kittens is often totally hard to digest. It’s HUGE. Just last month, we spayed almost 25 early pregnant cats – you can see how many lives that saved through prevention. It also means the world to the human caretakers of these kitties who so often struggle to feed their own families let alone the dozens of cats they care for. We will spend 5 days in the field working with community members in this very under-resourced communities. We will set traps in trailer parks, in yards and barns, on decks and in gardens – wherever we can – to get 80 cats sterilized, vaccinated and microchipped.    This will require not only 36 hours of trapping but more than 10 additional hours of driving to and from our surgical clinic. Our van will be loaded up with 80 cats (the very most we can fit) to make the 3.5 hour one-way trip to the surgical center. This is a huge undertaking each time we do it. But with no affordable large-scale spay/neuter clinics close by, we take what we can get. Our team is so dedicated! And so over a short period of just 5 days, we will sterilize, vaccinate and microchip 200 animals in two separate but equally under-resourced communities. And we are SO EXCITED. Please sponsor a dog or cat at just $100 and you can be a winner of a $350 Amazon gift card, a custom dog or cat goody basket and 2 free tickets to our Chili Bingo event in the fall – winner to be chosen as soon as we meet our $ goal.