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.