Dog lover or mentally unstable mess?

I’ve been thinking about volunteer opportunities. Basically, I need to get out of my rut of hating my job and hating everything because it’s, like, 847 degrees all the damned time. Also, I think a chance to do a little nurturing will help me figure out this whole “we’re probably never getting knocked up” thing.

It’s complicated.

I’ve researched helping socialize dogs at 2 different animal shelters. I could just hang out with dogs! I like dogs a lot! I am good with dogs! It would be a win / win!

Gratuitous dog photo

Except both my mom and My Guy had the exact same reaction:

“Shaaa, riiiiiiight. That would be the worst volunteer match-up ever. You’d adopt, like, every single dog.”

Actually, I believe My Guy added a healthy dose of “oh, helllll no” to his response. Given that he lives with 4 dogs, I guess it’s understandable that he’d have a really intense reaction.

But, see? I could go, work with the dogs, and then go home. I’m not dumb enough to believe that I could work at a kill shelter. I’m talking about a super low-kill shelter, and only working with the dogs who need to be socialized so that they can find their forever homes. It would be like I was running a finishing school for debutantes, but we’d work on not shitting on people instead of, you know, which fork to use.

My Guy was gentle, but firm. “Your heart is just too big,” he said. “You’d bring all those dogs home, and we already have too many. You know there’s undiscovered pee somewhere in our house. We have too many dogs, and only 1 of them isn’t an asshole.”

I considered this. I do have a track record of adopting special-needs (read: cute but completely untrainable) canines. I will not comment on how this also correlates to my choice of husband.

“Are you saying that without you, I’d become an animal hoarder?”

My cute husband got that evil little lying smile. “Your parents and I talk about it all the time,” he said. “I saved you from being a hoarder. You were 1 marriage away from being on that show. Your folks are always thanking me for saving you from being knee-deep in poo and dogs.”

Hmm.

Considering that I am somewhat fastidious about keeping the level of filth in my home to a mere yellow on the Homeland Security threat level chart, I find this hard to believe. But maybe my husband and my mama have a point.

Any tips? Ideas for other volunteer opportunities that might be less likely to get me my own humiliating show on TLC?