As his fingers glided over the dirty golden coat of the dog, junior Vikram Aditya Srikanth couldn’t help but notice its ribs jutting out of its thin build. Eight years ago, when he was a 7-year-old waiting for the school bus on weekday mornings in India, he noticed the same few stray dogs lining the street. Their scrawny figures reflected their poor living conditions, filling him with sadness. Despite his mom telling him to stay away from them for fear of contracting diseases, Srikanth felt that the dogs needed someone to care for them. In those 20 minutes that he waited for the bus to arrive, he would interact with the dogs by petting them or scratching their ears, never getting bitten once.

Since he was a freshman, Srikanth’s natural compassion for animals led him to volunteer at Animal Assisted Happiness, a farm organization that uses animals to aid people with disabilities, emotional challenges and other impairments. AAH trains its animals to soothe visitors and provide a means of human-animal bonds. Volunteering at AAH changed the way Srikanth viewed animal needs.

“Before, I thought all that mattered was making sure that they weren’t going to die,” Srikanth said. “But as I learned more about them, I realized that the animals have social needs as well. For example, the guinea pigs all live in pens, and when there’s only one of them, they get really lonely. There’s deeper things that we need to fulfill for them and the amount of care you can provide can go extremely high depending on how much effort you want to put in.”

Srikanth enjoys his work at AAH so much that he recommended it to his friend, junior Abhi Kotari, who began volunteering there shortly thereafter. Kotari works mostly during the summer, volunteering between three to five times each week. Contrary to Srikanth, his passion for helping animals began after volunteering on the farm and realizing he loved it.

“It’s just a great atmosphere and I love animals,” Kotari said. “I love what Animal Assisted Happiness does and everything that goes into it because it’s not just for the animal’s sake, but also for other people that might be facing challenges.”

While the work is mostly straightforward, Srikanth and Kotari acknowledge there are challenging aspects of working at AAH, such as when animals escape and volunteers are in charge of putting them back in their pens. Despite these difficulties, both express love for their jobs because they learn important life skills while having fun taking care of the animals at the farm.

“Sometimes the bunnies escape, and that’s definitely an issue that we have,” Kotari said. “You have to communicate with other people to figure out how to catch the bunny while making sure you don’t accidentally hurt it.”

AAH categorizes their work into on-farm jobs and mobile visit jobs. In addition to tracking down escaped animals, on-farm volunteers help the animals by cleaning up their droppings, giving them water, feeding them and cleaning their pens. During mobile visits, AAH staff bring their animals to a separate location to meet a wider range of people. An example is MVHS’ “Furry Friends” event, where therapy dogs are brought to the rally court before finals week each semester to help students manage their stress.

One of the many people that AAH has impacted is sophomore Tara Brumand, who attends Furry Friends at MVHS every semester. Her most recent experience in December marks her third involvement in the event. Brumand says she loves interacting with different breeds of dogs and observing their distinct personalities. Ultimately, she feels that the event is a nice segue into finals week each semester.

“It’s one of my favorite parts of the pre-finals experience,” Brumand said. “It’s a nice stress reliever and gives me an opportunity to not think about all the things that might be stressing me out at that time. If I’m frequently feeling smothered by my workload, the event is a nice physical and mental break for me.”

A starkly different atmosphere compared to school, Kotari says he finds the work environment at AAH to be calming, which he attributes to the set agenda. He enjoys having his tasks set out for him and actively working to go through them one by one. On the farm, Kotari assigns jobs to volunteers for their two-hour slot, whether it’s working with animals or keeping the farm clean.

“I don’t have a preference for jobs, so I just help out where I can,” Kotari said. “A lot of the time, Vikram and I would volunteer together and take care of the animals while talking to each other, creating a positive atmosphere.”

Although Srikanth initially joined AAH with a pre-existing love for animals, his appreciation for animals and their unique personalities only grew after volunteering on the farm. Through his volunteer work, Srikanth believes he was able to simultaneously help animals and humans as his care for animals allows them to further care for the people they assist.

“I’ve seen really beautiful things that the animals can do,” Srikanth said. “I remember one of the pigs on the farm had communicated with someone who was non-verbal for over an hour. It was really amazing because I don’t think a person could have recreated that moment.”

This story was originally published on El Estoque on January 27, 2025.