Volunteer Highlight


Caring for the animals at the state’s largest shelter takes a lot of teamwork and this month we are beginning a feature highlighting a volunteer or staff person who works behind the scenes to care for the hundreds of animals temporarily housed at IACS. 

Meet Lauren, Volunteer! 

Lauren began volunteering at IACS back in 2017. She teaches the Level One dog handling class and helps to train new canine volunteers.

As part of the volunteer program development team, she just started managing the canine volunteer mentoring program. She’s helped future volunteers by making tutorial videos for canine enrichment, kennel cleaning, becoming a mentor, and levels two and three canine volunteers.

Lauren takes her work home with her and currently has five fosters and three dogs. 

When asked if there was an animal she’ll never forget, Lauren said, “A pup eventually named Marshmallow came to the shelter with no hair and red, scabbed skin from Demodex mange. She was so miserable. Volunteers worked together to get her into a foster home asap; now she is a happy, healthy girl! I have fostered 11 dogs that started at IACS and had 19 fosters in total. I will never forget them of course!” 

Thank you for all you do, Lauren!