Volunteering

If you are interested in volunteering with Cavalier Rescue USA, please complete our volunteer application and then contact the representative for your area so they know of your interest. Here is a link to the volunteer application: Volunteer Application

To get the contact information for the Coordinator who leads rescue for your state, please click here: Contact Us.

Strong preference is given to people who already have or have had a Cavalier, and the process of becoming a volunteer includes an application, vet reference, discussion with the State Coordinator, and a home visit.

A key role in volunteering is fostering. You don’t have to be a dog expert to foster, but you do have to have time and love to give, and to be able to balance your heart and head. Parting with the foster dog can be difficult, but is usually a necessary part of volunteering. While foster families do occasionally adopt their foster dog, this isn’t the purpose of volunteering, and the dogs tend to be older or special needs dogs for whom placement outside of the rescue team is more difficult. If you are interested in adopting and in volunteering, it’s best to complete your family first and then volunteer.

The foster family’s role is to bring the Cavalier into their home, get needed medical care completed, assess the dog to determine the best type of new family for the foster Cavalier, and work with their State Coordinator to place the Cavalier into a loving and appropriate new family. This work isn’t always easy, but is almost always tremendously rewarding.

We have other volunteer opportunities available too that are very critical such as doing home visits with prospective new families, providing transportation for Cavaliers, and assisting with the website. A key role is Coordinator. Each state has a Coordinator who leads the rescue team in the state working with prior owners of dogs, rescue volunteers, applicants, and adopters. If you are good at organization and at mentoring others, you may enjoy being a Coordinator.

Please volunteer to help with rescue if you can. Working together, we can help all Cavaliers find a way home. Since our inception as a 501c3 non-profit organization in 2006, we have taken in and found homes for over 6000 Cavaliers and have become the most well established Cavalier breed rescue group in the country. Without our wonderful team of volunteers, this would not have been possible.