The home where the only pay is happiness The whiteboard in the office tells the story. It belongs to Carly Whyborn, 33, the volunteer manager. It has revealing statistics written all over it. There are 781 volunteers, aged 18 to 80-plus, at Battersea's London HQ, and its two sister sites at Old Windsor, Berks, and Brands Hatch, Kent. By the end of July, they had worked a total of 46,410 hours this year, easily on course to beat 2011"s total of 66,197 hours. They had fostered 365 traumatised dogs, taking them into their homes so they could get used to people before finding a new owner. They had also fostered 86 cats. The volunteers helped care for a total of 8,904 animals last year. And without them, says Miss Whyborn, the 152-year-old institution that is Battersea would "grind to a halt." "They are pretty incredible people," says Miss Whyborn, an admiring, paid employee. It isn't all the glamour of mucking out. Some will simply do the gardening, growing the lavender that provides a calming scent in the kennels. Others do the laundry. The bedding for the full complement of about 450 dogs is changed twice a day. "Many are very anxious when they first arrive, so there are 'accidents,"" says Charlotte Woolley, 42, at the start of a four-hour shift in a hot, windowless laundry. It's a bit smelly, but I don't mind. There were other volunteer jobs advertised, but I thought I would do something no one else would want to do. For such labours, the volunteers are rewarded with no pay, and plenty of scratches. Ray's is on the bridge of his nose. "Entirely my fault," he insists. I should have been calm. I bent down to greet her, she jumped up and our heads collided. She wasn't being aggressive. Sometimes, the volunteers receive news of former residents. Diana, a Staffie cross, was last heard of running along beaches in the West Country. She arrived as, by common consent, "the most nervous dog Battersea has ever seen." She left nearly three months later, last November, confident enough to enjoy the good life in Cornwall. Other dogs live close enough to London to make personal reappearances at the home. Yoda, a boxer-mastiff cross, graced Battersea Park with his presence at the annual reunion event last month. He was found in February, skinny, terrified and tied to a lamppost in Wandsworth, south London. Yet he left Battersea in May, as a happy, friendly dog joining a "lovely family" from Surrey. The woman who taught Diana and Yoda to trust humans again is Chris McLean, 55, from Surbiton, Surrey, who combines a job as a community matron for the long-term ill with being a Battersea dog fosterer. She started taking dogs into her home in 2010, after getting Willow, her own Staffie, from Battersea. "It sucks you in, this place," she says happily. I wanted to do more. With traumatised dogs, however, progress is rarely quick. "I do sometimes think 'Gosh, this dog is hard work," but then you get those little moments. Like when Yoda decided he was confident enough to sit beside my husband on the sofa. It was so lovely to see him with his new family. In the cattery, they keep a "happy endings" file. The bulging lever arch folder is crammed with contented cats gazing into cameras wielded by besotted owners. Somewhere in there is Jerome, "a black and white cat of no particular pedigree." When Jerome arrived about a year ago, he was what they call "spicy." Pami Preller, 59, a South African-born wildlife artist, explains why: "I have tracked lions in the bush, on foot. I have had a hyena poke its nose into my tent. Nothing terrified me as much as Jerome when he first came here. If you tried putting a hand out to stroke him, well ... You would go in with 10 fingers and leave with eight. Jerome, of course, was terrified of people. Miss Preller and her fellow "cat socialisers" had to teach him that humans weren't a threat. In the early days, this would mean going into the "socialising room" - designed to look like a living room - and sitting on the sofa for an hour reading aloud to Jerome, who would stay in the farthest corner, hissing. The volunteers did this three times a day, trying to accustom Jerome to the sound of a friendly voice. For weeks, he refused to come anywhere near them. Eventually, however, he would rub affectionately against a volunteer's hand instead of trying to bite it off. After five months in Battersea, he was ready to choose his owner - which is how Miss Preller insists we describe it. Jerome definitely chose David [a London-based music teacher]. It wasn't the other way round. He leapt on to David's lap and started purring. It was a match made in heaven. It was just wonderful," she says, allowing herself a little tear. Miss Preller has been volunteering at Battersea for eight years, and has the scars - "little love scratches" she calls them - to prove it. When she tried to break up a cat fight, one of the combatants, called Captain, cut her finger to the bone: "I demoted him to Lieutenant." When the cat looks at you and trusts you, and you know the terrible start it had in life, that is the most wonderful experience you can ever, ever have. This is the most fantastic job ever. When you remind her about the non-existent pay, Miss Preller just smiles a little more: "The pay," she says, "is purring."