Sydney Dogs & Cats Home – Manager

Sydney Dogs & Cats Home is a really

special place. We're a council holding

facility for eight councils in Sydney,

and we're also a rehoming facility and a

community engagement facility for animal

welfare as well.

My role is the animal care manager, so I'm

overseeing all the daily animal care aspects of the

shelter. I'm also a vet, so I'm involved in the

vet side of things which is a really

big part of what we do.

The connection between people and

animals is really important, that human

animal bond. So we run a couple of

programs with school groups, so their

kids with behavioral or learning issues,

where the kids will come in and read to

the animals. So they get to practice

their skills, and the animals find it

really soothing and calming as well so,

it's a great program.

Someone looking to adopt an animal,

the first step is to come into the shelter

and have a look around, so you can see

all our beautiful animals and when you

find someone that you feel a bond with,

then you'd come and have a chat to a

staff member about that animal.

The best part of our job is to see the animals go

home to a loving family.

The challenge for us is our facility,

it's very old and very small, so we

really struggle to do everything that

we need to do for the animals.

We're in the process of designing and building

a new facility, we've been doing a lot of

research on putting a lot of work into

that. We're really excited to have the

space to do what we need to do.

We really want to give back to the

community, to the people and the animals

that are in this community, so we really

are trying to raise money at the moment

to really provide those services.