The Petfinder Foundation's Rescue U team is heading to Tennessee's Humane Society of Jefferson County, where from May 22-30, the student volunteers will complete a staggering number of projects to renovate the shelter. The Jefferson County shelter is near and dear to the students' hearts: Shelter manager Melissa Enck is a graduate of Delaware Valley College -- where Rescue U got its start.

Adoptable pets like Wilma will benefit from the Rescue U renovation of the
Humane Society of Jefferson County.

Today is traveling day. Christine Yacco, a Rescue U and Delaware Valley College alum, and I are driving from Pennsylvania to Jefferson City, TN. We spent hours yesterday loading a U-Haul with tools and supplies. In a normal car, it would be an 11-hour drive. In our loaded-down truck, it will definitely take a few hours more.

Doug Woolsey, a Rescue U program manager based in Tucson, is meeting us at the shelter. Christine, Doug and I will get all the supplies and work plans ready. We'll also pre-pour the concrete foundation for the new cat-enrichment area that we're building for the shelter.

The students can then jump right in on Tuesday when they start working. This is going to be a great trip and the shelter staff and board of directors are so excited and appreciative. They've even promised to cook for us. You have to love Southern hospitality!

The final two days of our Rescue U trip at the City of Guthrie Animal Shelter in Oklahoma were a lot of work. Volunteers completed the outdoor cat enclosure, a metal storage building and the pergola over the new meet-and-greet pens we built earlier in the week. We put the finishing touches on the painting, the exercise pens and the roofs over the outdoor dog kennels. The brand new stainless steel cat cages we ordered arrived the final day and were installed.

You could see the appreciation in shelter manager and animal control officer Suzy Brown's eyes every time she saw another completed project. "To put it into one word: WOW," she says. "It was amazing. There was immediate progress. It was like watching a movie on fast forward. Any time you take a cat or dog outside to play with them, it is so great, and with the new exercise areas, everyone gets yard time now."