My plane arrived at McCarran airport in Las Vegas just before midnight on Friday night, June 26th. Happy to be off that sardine can with wings, I drove home to try to get some sleep before driving out to Best Friends in the morning. I had wanted to get there for the morning shift which would have meant getting there at 8 AM. From Vegas that's a minimum of 4 hours including the 1 hour time difference, which meant getting up at 3:30 AM or so. It was 1 AM when I got home from the airport.

An and I decided that there was no way we were going to be able to drive there on less than 3 hours of sleep, never mind volunteer for a whole day, so we slept until 7:30 in order to get to Best Friends in time to do an afternoon shift. When we got up, I called the volunteer coordinator number to let them know we wouldn't be there at our scheduled time, but we got the answering machine so I left a message, and then we got our stuff together and hit the road.

We arrived in Kanab, UT at around 12:30, a little later than we had hoped. We drove right to the Welcome Center to catch one of the volunteer coordinators as soon as we could to try to get set up and ready to go by 1 PM so we could do an afternoon shift. Luckily, Freddi was there to help us out and we got our name tags and volunteer badges and we were ready to volunteer by around 1. We drove around to Dogtown and Jessica was there to greet us. She asked where we'd like to volunteer, and since An and I had talked about going back to Amra's in the car on the way up, we decided on Amra's for the afternoon.

We got our whistles and drove over to Dogtown Heights, where Amra's is located next to Rhonda's. I was happy to see McKenzie outside as we got out of the car, and I couldn't wait to get started. McKenzie brought us inside and showed us some of the puppy mill dogs they had recently taken in, all small breeds. By far the most awesome was Pilates, who does this hysterical thing with her rear legs when she's excited - she stretches them out behind her, one at a time.

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You know most dogs will bark or jump around or wag frantically when excited — not Pilates. She'll just stand there and look at you, then stretch one leg, put it down and stretch the other one. "I'm so excited I'm just going to do some calisthenics here." She was very friendly though, we sat in her run with her for a few minutes, and she liked the attention.

After that, McKenzie had some dogs that needed to go for a walk, so we said we'd bring them out to the dunes for a bit of a longer outing. First on the list was China, a Staffordshire Terrier who survived Hurricane Katrina and was rescued by Best Friends. She was eager to hit the trails, and we took her out for a nice long walk down one of the sandy roads near the dunes. She was very friendly and we enjoyed our time with her although she didn't want to drink any water and it was a hot day.

When we got back to Amra's, we mentioned that she hadn't wanted to drink, and then McKenzie asked if I wouldn't mind taking Batgirl out again, since I had taken her out last time with my brother Kief. But of course Batgirl is a lot of fun so we said sure, we'd love to take her out again. We brought Batgirl out to the same road, but we took a different path. Batgirl was very happy to be out and on a walk, but it was about 95 degrees and clear, so in direct sunlight it was pretty hot. With her sheer black coat, she began to heat up pretty quickly. The sand wasn't hot enough to burn her paws, but she was happy to sit down in the shade when we found some.

The girl gets a bat-massage

She was thirsty and drank a lot of water, and then she just relaxed with us in the shade. She loves to be petted, and began rolling over for belly rubs. We didn't even want to leave for a little while because it was so much fun to hang out with Batgirl. But the day wasn't getting any cooler, and we still had a bit of a walk to get back to the car so we decided to head back. Batgirl was good in the car as we drove back to Amra's, and although she liked being out with us I think she was happy to get out of the sun.

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“First on the list was China, a Staffordshire Terrier who survived Hurricane Katrina and was rescued by Best Friends.”