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BACK ISSUES

POOCH Ambassador: George Knop

GEORGE KNOP

AS A NEWSLETTER feature, our Project POOCH volunteer coordinator, SUSIE WAKI, will choose a volunteer, aka POOCH Ambassador, to introduce in each issue. To start off, she has chosen GEORGE KNOP.

Now that he is retired from a 35-year career in the transportation industry, George Knop volunteers to drive the POOCH Mobile. He found out about Project POOCH when he saw a notice Susie Waki posted on Craig’s List to recruit volunteers.

According to George, “I HAD to become involved. Not only is Project POOCH a win win for both youths and dogs, it is a major win for me personally.”

He started last spring, and calls in every morning to see what dogs need to be driven for visits to the vet or for an outing to a nearby park or to a home visit with a potential adopter. George also goes to the shelters frequently to choose new dogs to bring into the program. He has made himself available at just about any time of the day or day of the week to transport POOCH dogs — in addition to taking his own beloved cattle dog, Archie, to the veterinarian for weekly chemotherapy treatment.

When he isn’t helping POOCH, George is involved in wildlife rehabilitation and bird rescue. He was only 8-years-old when he rescued his first bird, a baby Blue Jay, with the assistance and encouragement of his parents.

Crows have become his special interest; he has a web site with “everything you ever wanted to know about crows and corvids ” at www.zeebyrd.com/corvi29/. He rescues and rehabilitates both babies and injured adult birds, and once even rehabilitated a Great Horned owl.

GEORGE KNOP introduced the crow he raised at POOCH 101.

When George participated in the weeklong POOCH 101 workshop held in June, he delighted other attendees by bringing along CROMWELL, a young crow he rescued, raised and released.

Before George joined the POOCH team, a significant portion of Joan Dalton’s time was consumed by transporting dogs. Now that George has relieved her of that task, she has more time to devote to the executive director’s duties of program planning and development.

George likes to quote Mahatma Gandhi, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

He says, “To me, that means becoming a Project POOCH volunteer.”