Volunteering opportunities
Puppy socialising
Volunteer puppy socialisers play a vital role in a potential hearing dog’s early training; teaching basic obedience and manners and building confidence by introducing the pup to new people and experiences. Socialisers must be able to attend regular puppy classes at one of Hearing Dogs’ centres so need to live in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, West London, Middlesex, Hampshire or Yorkshire (within a 25 mile radius of Selby). We are now expanding our search for socialisers to other counties where we operate classes: near Southampton, Soham or Exeter.
Contact the puppy socialising team on 01844 348129 or by email
Click here to find out more about puppy socialising
Bed & Breakfast socialising
We're also looking for volunteers who live close enough to either our south Buckinghamshire or north Yorkshire training centres to pick up a hearing dog in training at 5pm on a weekday night, look after him overnight, then drop him back for training at 9am the following morning.
If you could help out as a 'bed & breakfast' socialiser, we'd love to hear from you. If you're interested in boarding dogs from our head office in Bucks, please call 01844 348129 - or if you could offer the same support to our northern centre in Cliffe, call 01757 638666.
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Re-homing
We have a waiting list of adopters who give a lifelong home to dogs that don’t quite make the hearing dog grade. We match dogs carefully with adopters, and only re-home dogs with people who won't have to leave the dog for longer than three hours, to ensure the re-homing process and new lifestyle isn't too traumatic for the dog or its adopter!
Contact our re-homing team on 01844 348105 or by email
Dog walkers
If you love dogs, want to get more exercise and live near our headquarters in Saunderton - dog walking might be the volunteering opportunity for you! We're looking for volunteers on weekdays between 11am and 4pm. If you could help, please call 01844 348100 or email.
Volunteer speaker
You could really help us by volunteering to give short talks to groups in your local area, such as schools or clubs. We provide the script and the slides, while you deliver the talk, spread the Hearing Dogs’ message and take the applause!
Contact Ann Ramsden, speakers' liaison co-ordinator on 01844 348109.
Branch member or founder
Could you volunteer your time to join one of our fundraising branches? Click here to locate existing branches around the UK – or contact your local regional fundraiser if you’d like to start up your own branch with friends or colleagues.
Volunteer driver
Being a volunteer driver for Hearing Dogs could fit in well around your other commitments. You need a full driving licence and should enjoy driving and meeting people. We need drivers for collecting people from the station, delivering tents to shows, transporting a dog from A to B, and many other journeys to and from or in the vicinity of our head office in Bucks and our satellite centre in north Yorkshire. We also need volunteers willing to assist us with our weekly trip to and from Tamworth to meet colleagues and exchange items that need transporting between our two centres. The departure time for this trip is 11am, returning around 3pm - usually on a Monday.
Offer your special skills
Many of you will have a special skill or talent you can offer the Charity: communication skills (BSL, lipspeaking, deaf-blind communication, speech-to-text reporting, note-taking), photography and numerous others.
Such expertise is often expensive to employ and so by volunteering to fill one of these roles you will help free valuable funds to support other important areas of our work.
If you think you may be able to help us in any way, please contact us at Head Office.
