Ebay auctions

Camp Cocker has several donated items that we might be able to list and sell on eBay for fundraising. Looking for a Los Angeles area volunteer who might like to come over and look at the items, take pictures, figure out a minimum bid and post them on eBay with descriptions.

Sewing dog collars

We have a simple sewing machine and supplies for making dog collars, we just need someone who knows how to sew and can follow the easy directions on how to sew dog collars. We would use these collars for the Camp Cocker doggies and possibly sell any extras on our website for donations. Here is a link to How to make a dog collar and wouldn't you know it? There is a cute cocker in the picture! Awww!

Posting Craig's List ads

We have a need for people in all cities and regions to post Craig's List ads to help us with fundraising and to reach out to Cocker Spaniel lovers in other parts of the world. Sometimes a Craig's List ad might not generate more than a ten dollar donation, but sometimes it will help to network us and someone will mail us some donated dog toys, or some used blankets, or anything else they can contribute. You never know who will read about one of our dogs in need and want to help. We also need Craig's List ads posted in areas that we aim to find high quality adopters in, such as Northern California, and even as far North as Oregon? (we have considered the idea of gathering adoption interest and trying to line up five or six potential adopters and then making a big road trip up to Portland)

Help with our dogs in boarding

Camp Cocker boards many of our dogs at a boarding facility in Romoland, CA and even though the dogs are getting minimal care, fed, clean kennels, medicine, they never get enough one on one human interaction. Sometimes for a dog to have a half an hour of time with a volunteer who will sit on the floor with a dog, brush them, pet them, talk to them, take them for a leisurely walk . . . this can brighten the day for many of these dogs who are spending most of their time in a dog kennel. This is where you, our valuable volunteers, come in. No matter where you live or how far you are willing to travel, we will take your volunteer time any day of the week for any amount of time. Maybe you have a long weekend coming up and would like to grab your significant other or roomate or best friend and take a road trip to Los Angeles? How fun would that be to spend a weekend giving back of your time to make a difference in the lives of some shelter dogs? We don't have our own facility so you would have to stay in a motel, but what a great trip to go back home and tell your friends about! Or if you live locally in the Los Angeles area, how about making a commitment to come out once a week for a couple of hours? Grab your boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse and make a weekly commitment, this can be such a great bonding experience for you both and it is a lot cheaper than going to the movies or out to dinner (and much more rewarding)

Shelter scouts (phone volunteers and in person volunteers)

Camp Cocker tries to keep a watchful eye on the more than twenty shelters within 125 miles radius of Los Angeles. We need to find a local person that is in the region of each shelter who can act as our shelter scout. What this involves is both checking that shelter's website on a daily basis (usually a couple of times a day to check as new dogs arrive). When you see a cocker show up, phone the shelter immediately to get all of the pertinent information about that dog (we can provide you with a list of questions to ask). We need the animal's id number, the shelter picture and the details to be added to our "worry list" (oh, more about that later). If this is all you can do, then please sign up to be a phone volunteer. If you would also like to be an in person volunteer, we would then need you to go in person to the shelter to meet the dog in person, ask the shelter staff if they can take the dog out of the cage on a leash to let you walk it or interact with it. Take pictures of the dog, as many good pictures as you can manage to get (shelter dogs always look a mess, and their expressions are often frightened or depressed, but do the best you can, any picture you take will be better than the shelter picture). What would be really nice is to get a pair of volunteers to agree to cover each shelter, one can do the phone work, one can do the in person or you can take turns. On any given day there are more than sixty cockers in the shelters we watch, and it is impossible for us to help them all. The goal to having shelter scouts cover each shelter, is two fold. One is to find out asap when a cocker comes into a shelter that is injured, in pain, been hit by a car. These are dogs that we must stop everything else we are doing, get our fundraising pleas out asap and get the dog the heck out of the shelter and to an emergency room as soon as possible. When a dog is in pain, no matter what, that dog immediately gets moved to the top of the triage list. The second benefit of having shelter scouts is to get more in depth information about each cocker, get more attractive pictures and this will at least give us the opportunity to network the dogs to other rescue groups or even send potential adopters to go directly to that shelter to adopt if we think it might be a good match. Being a shelter scout does not mean that every dog you network is going to get saved and that is the sad reality of what we do on a daily basis. But with your help, we can try to get more of these dogs networked and saved. Even if we can only help an additional ten dogs a month, it means something to those ten dogs.

The WORRY LIST

We have an amazing volunteer, Jill, who watches the shelter websites daily, to keep track of the cockers as they come into the shelters and she posts this on her "Cockers in LA Shelters" blog that is on our website. This is our "worry list". There is never any way possible, that we can ever save every dog on the worry list. There are weeks or months when we feel like we can't even save five percent of the cockers on the worry list. There are times when we all feel so disheartened, like we are not making a difference at all. We need help with the worry list and we need to make it something more than it is right now (one person cannot manage it alone). Until we get shelter scouts for each and every shelter, we need more than just Jill to watch the shelter websites. We also need a volunteer who can call the shelters to get details on the dogs as they come in so that Jill can get more details to include on her blog. Our hope is that not only can adopters see dogs in shelters, but we can invite other rescue groups to try to help rescue cockers as well. We want to keep a daily tally of the dogs in shelters, the numbers of how many come in, how many go out (and how many are to private adopters, how many to rescue groups?), and how many get put to sleep. If we can begin to keep track of the numbers, it will help us in so many ways. In applying for grants, if we had the numbers and data to back us up, it will help us to apply for funding. In reaching out to potential adopters and trying to educate the community about what the consequences are if they are purchasing cocker puppies from backyard breeders or puppy mills or pet stores. We know that our worry list can open up the eyes of so many people who might not realize how dire the situation is with cockers in shelters. There are many future cockers who will one day end up in a shelter, through no fault of their own, who are going to benefit from the many volunteers who might sign up to help us with the worry list.