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Description:
An examination of 12 peer-reviewed papers on pet relinquishment, 6 on dogs who were returned after being adopted, and 14 on the behaviors of dogs living in homes revealed no strong evidence supporting the prevailing belief that behavioral incompatibilities are a primary risk factor for owners surrendering their pets to shelters. Only 2 studies (one from the 1990s and the other published in 2000) in the literature contained actual risk analyses of specific behaviors. Neither found strong evidence of behavioral risk factors. Dogs living in homes do not appear to be behaviorally different from dogs living in shelters. Moreover, the studies on dogs living in homes revealed no consensus regarding behaviors that owners considered problematic or how any of them affected their satisfaction with the relationship. When combined with the low validity levels and poor predictive ability of battery-style behavior evaluations commonly administered in shelters, the relinquishment literature makes the use of such instruments highly questionable. What does this mean for adoption policies and placement procedures in shelters?

Learning Objectives:

1. Analyze claims of risk factors and reject those that do not meet basic scientific definitions
2. Develop adoption policies and procedures free of behavioral bias regarding the shelter population of dogs
3. Develop adoption counseling procedures free of generalizations about adopter expectations
4. Understand and be able to explain the inefficacy of battery behavior evaluations

Description:
Attendees will learn from Steve Zeidman, Dr. Julie Levy, and Kristen Hassen about how to utilize national and local data to build a dog management program that balances public health and safety, live outcomes, humane care, intake management and prevention, and cost efficiency. This session will begin with Steve Zeidman sharing the last three years of data about big dogs in shelters, including trends in intake, length of stay, live outcomes, types of outcomes, and more. Following this, Kristen Hassen will present an overview of what a comprehensive program to manage big dogs in shelters looks like. She’ll share recommendations for proven programs, smart policies, and goal-setting that will enable animal welfare leaders to tackle tough shelter problems, build a sustainable management system for big dogs, and get more dogs into homes faster, all while maintaining a culture of safety and community responsibility.

Learning Objectives:

1. Attendees will learn what the data shows about national trends in big dogs in animal shelters and how to apply this information to their own organizations programs and policies.
2. Attendees will want to share the data points they learn, the big dog management practices of the most successful organizations, and how to make small changes to their practices that have a significant, measurable impact on length of stay, live outcomes, intake reduction, and more.
3. They’ll also learn the components of a healthy big dog management program and will be able to identify gaps and problem areas in their own organizations in order to be able to make improvements.

Description:
You’ll learn the most effective strategies for placing more big dogs in foster homes, marketing them, and getting them adopted without needing to return to the shelter. You’ll learn what the latest market research says about messaging and techniques that can turn potential fosters into applicants, how short-term foster programs can help you find the fosters and adopters you need, and how organizations with the most robust foster programs are empowering foster caregivers to assist in efforts to market their foster pets online.

Learning Objectives:

1. Attendees will learn how to create a community culture of fostering, normalizing the fostering of big dogs
2. Attendees will learn messaging techniques for motivating potential fosters to sign up
3. Understand the major reasons people decide not to foster and the strategies that are most effective in overcoming these barriers
4. Develop a protocol for marketing and adopting pets from foster homes

Description:
Speakers Rachel Jones and Kristen Hassen will teach attendees how to move harder ‘long stay’ dogs into homes more quickly. The session will begin by defining what we mean when we describe a dog as a ‘long stay’ and how shelters can track the data on these dogs in order to help them more quickly. The presenters will talk about the common factors that cause a dog to get ‘stuck’ in the shelter system and how a combination of case management, targeted enrichment, thoughtful marketing, and transparent communication can help these more challenging dogs. This session will also address the conundrum of ‘warehousing’ vs. euthanizing healthy and saveable dogs and how shelters can address this problem, not by choosing one of these two options, but, an entirely different path altogether. This session stems from work done at the Pima Animal Care Center, an open-admission shelter with an intake of roughly 15,000 dogs annually and an average length of stay in the shelter of just nine days.

Learning Objectives:

1. Attendees will learn how to use daily inventory reports to identify ‘long stay’ dogs and what information needs to be gathered to help move them out of the shelter system. Rachel Jones, the nation’s first ‘long stay’ dog case management, will share her experiences working to improve outcomes and to reduce the length of stay for these dogs.
2. Attendees will also learn how to identify the common internal and external factors that lead to dogs having longer-than-necessary lengths of stay and the immediate actions to take to remove these obstacles to outcomes.
3. Attendees will learn how to do a daily walk-through process and quarterly shelter census review process in order to ensure no dogs ´slip through the cracks,´ and ´long stay´ dogs receive immediate and urgent attention.

Description:
As our communities become more informed about recognizing and responding to human trauma, there’s growing interest in the impact of chronic stress and trauma on animal behavior. There’s a large volume of evidence that demonstrates the negative impact of trauma on human health and welfare. While research in animals isn’t focused on the concept of trauma, this session will share evidence that demonstrates the impact of stressful experiences on animal health and welfare. Acknowledgment of the role of trauma in animal behavior encourages us to be more understanding and respond more appropriately to undesirable or challenging behaviors that may be caused by trauma. This session will discuss practical ways you can prevent trauma and help animals to recover.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the impact of traumatic experiences on human and animal health and well-being.
2. Understand why the shelter environment can be a traumatic experience for most animals
3. Apply trauma-informed thinking to your interactions with animals
4. Develop trauma-informed management plans for dogs and cats

Description:
Medium and large dogs pose a number of challenges for animal welfare and it’s easy to lose community support, including support from the government leadership, if there is an ongoing perception that it’s just too hard to achieve live outcomes for them. In this session, attendees will hear from three leaders who are experts in gaining public support for shelter pets. In the first portion of this session, Sarah Aguilar will teach attendees the critical safety factors shelters need to be tracking, including bites in the shelter and in the community, injuries to staff and volunteers, risk management claims, and safety incidents and responses in the shelter. She’ll share how animal shelters can create safety tool kits for kennel areas and what training animal shelters should provide to staff and volunteers related to safety. She’ll connect all of this to the practice of reporting this information publicly, to help leadership and community members understand how safety and lifesaving are related. In the second part, Dr. Ellen Jefferson and Bobby Mann will talk about the programs that can help keep animals out of shelters in the first place, how to gain public support for these programs and how to engage human services agencies to promote them.

Learning Objectives:

1. Attendees will learn how to track safety data and share it with the public to gain community support.
2. Attendees will learn how to create a culture of safety in their organization and how to keep shelter staff and volunteers safe and to mitigate risk factors.
3. Attendees will learn about the three programs that can keep big dogs out of shelters and how to gain community buy-in to start and grow these programs.

Description:
In this session, attendees will learn strategies for minimizing length of stay for medium and large dogs, from in-shelter techniques through adoption marketing. Topics discussed include: how to design and create a pipeline for great marketing materials on dogs in care, ensure that pets’ online profiles are kept up to date and that each dog is marketed robustly.

Learning Objectives:

1. Attendees will learn about barriers to adoption and how to avoid them
2. Attendees will learn what an intake-to-placement program is and how it works
3. Attendees will learn the difference between marketing and adoption counseling and how to ensure transparency while keeping them separate.
4. They’ll learn how to create a protocol to ensure that every dog in their care is robustly marketed, with no one slipping through the cracks.

Description:
There are a number of factors that lead to big dogs facing a particularly precarious situation in animal shelters. While it’s no fault of the dogs, size and breed restrictions are particularly detrimental to big dogs, causing them to sit in shelters longer and to be brought to shelters because their owners aren’t allowed to keep them. Behavioral and medical decline, particularly a problem during periods of high intake, can lead to space crises which force shelters to act urgently to avoid euthanizing dogs due to lack of space. Behavioral decline, often caused by the stress of shelter confinement, leads to sheltered dogs being slated for euthanasia when no immediate outcome options are available. These factors can lead to shelter workers and volunteers feeling helpless and demoralized like there is just no answer. Luckily, there are things you can do to save big dogs, even in the hardest of circumstances. In this session, Clare Callison will teach you the proven steps you can take to get dogs into homes during periods of crisis or when dogs are at risk of euthanasia due to behavioral decline or a long length of stay. Attendees will learn to implement easy, low cost or free strategies to get dogs out faster and avoid holding dogs indefinitely, with no solid plan.

Learning Objectives:

1. Attendees will learn actionable steps to take to alleviate a big dog space crisis, which includes transfer and transport pleas, intake deferment of non-emergency intakes, emergency foster pleas, innovative adoption pushes, co-housing dogs, emergency marketing, and more
2. Implement the proven ‘lifesaving protocol for at-risk dogs,’ now taught for more than five years to hundreds of shelters around the nation. Attendees will learn the steps to giving the public and rescues the chance to save a dog before it is euthanized due to length of time in a shelter, behavioral decline, or space constraints.
3. Attendees will learn the factors that lead to the needless euthanasia of dogs, the signs of a stagnated movement process, and how to make small changes to streamline dog movement through the system toward live outcomes.

• Dogs Playing for LIfe
• Dogs Playing for Life 2021 Impact Report
• Dogs at risk of euthanasia participate in play groups

• Saving normal: A new look at behavioral incompatibilities and dog relinquishment to shelters, Gary Patronek, Janis Bradley, Elizabeth Arps
• No Better Than Flipping a Coin: Reconsidering canine behavior evaluations in animal shelters, Gary Patronek, Janis Bradley
• What is the evidence for reliability and validity of behavior evaluations for shelter dogs? A prequel to “No better than flipping a coin”, Gary Patronek, Janis Bradley, Elizabeth Arps
• Dog Bites – Problems and Solutions 2nd Edition, Janis Bradley
• Shelter dog behavior assessments don’t work. Here’s what does. (blog)

• Best Friends pet lifesaving dashboard (website)
• Shelter Animals Count (website)
• ZeidTalks blog (Steve Zeidman’s data blog)
• It’s not the dogs that are the problem. What the data on housing says (data report summary)

• Five elements of great shelter dog management (spreadsheet with links)
• What animal control officers actually do (spreadsheet)
• The transparency checklist: how to know if your shelter is truly transparent (blog and webcast)
• Example of a 10-year data report from a large, government animal shelter
• How to pilot a new program and achieve success (step-by-step protocol)
• Pathway planning (free Maddie’s University online course)
• Animal Shelter Safety Self-Assessment

• Recruit, Reengage, Renew: How to place more pets in foster homes right now (webcast)
• Foster Friday everyday! Creating a community culture that values fostering (blog)
• Recruit more fosters now in 7 simple steps (blog)
• 6 Tips for recruiting fosters for pets with behavioral needs
• Why We Foster(podcast)

• Empowering fosters to help market pets from foster care (webcast)
• Ensuring transparency while keeping marketing and adoption counseling separate (webcast)
• Getting foster dogs adopted: 5 tips for foster coordinators (blog)
• It’s time to make fostering more inclusive (blog)
• Marketing a foster pet (free Maddie’s University course for fosters)
• Using social media to help foster pets shine (free Maddie’s University course for fosters)
• The foster caregiver marketing guide (pdf)

• Finn’s Fund Advocate Orientation
• Finn’s Fund Marketing Orientation
• How to get your long-stay dogs adopted or fostered, faster (blog)
• Setting dogs with behavioral challenges up for success (webcast)
• Make this one change and watch your whole shelter transform (blog)
• Jacksonville Humane Society’s whole-shelter approach to shortening length of stay (blog)

• The Virginia behavioral dog foster study (ASPCA powerpoint slides)
• Loosening the reins on shelter enrichment (blog)
• Austin Pets Alive! Behavior support resource page for adopters (webpage)
• The Transparency Checklist: How to Know if Your Community’s Animal Shelter is Truly Transparent (webpage)

• NPR: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Quiz (webpage)
• 6 R’s of Trauma-Informed Therapy (webpage)
• Psychological Stress, Its Reduction, and Long-Term Consequences: What Studies with Laboratory Animals Might Teach Us about Life in the Dog Shelter (research article)
• RSPCA: Five Domains Model for Animal Welfare (webpage)
• Vancouver Humane Society: Trauma-Informed and Culturally Safe Training (for people) (free online course)

• Can we get sued for that? An introduction to managing liability risks at animal shelters & rescues (blog)
• PACC Safety report (webpage)
• How to keep big dogs from losing their marbles while they wait for homes (blog)
• Behavior foster program tool kit (tool kit)

• How to get your staff and volunteers on board with community-centered animal services (blog)
• Human Animal Support Services pet support tool kit (website tool kit)
• Human Animal Support Services lost pet reunification tool kit (website tool kit)
• Human Animal Support Services supported self-rehoming tool kit (website tool kit)
• Animal Support Social Worker job description (position description)
• Human Animal Support Services community based behavior support tool kit (website tool kit)
• My Pit Bull is Family housing resources and information (website)

• Lost Dog Pet Detectives
• Intake to Placement Toolkit
• Barrier Busting for Busy Animal Shelters
• Maddie’s Fund: Care Pathways Course

• 13 questions that will help you write great pet adoption bios (blog)
• Barrier-Free Bio Writing (blog)
• Getting Pets Noticed with Better Bios (blog)
• 10 Tips for Great Foster Pet Photos (blog)
• How Important are Photos to Pet Adoption? A Case Study (blog)
• To Find More Adopters and Fosters, Start with Your Language (blog)
• DEI Glossary
• Pet Adoption Portraits in ANY Environment (video)
• How to use TikTok for Animal Shelters (video)
• Overcoming Adoption Barriers: Where Marketing Meets Policy (video)

• Kevin, who might as well be a human roommate, from Austin Animal Center
• National Peanut Butter Day video from Dallas Animal Services
• Informal foster photo from Pennsylvania SPCA
• Explore more examples and tips

• Kansas City Pet Project
• Bastrop County Animal Services
• Nebraska Humane Society
• Lifeline Animal Project

• Facing a space crisis? Twelve ways to reduce your kennel census now (blog)
• Code Red: 12 tips for managing intake during space a crisis (blog)
• Emergency tactics: how to write an urgent social media plea for adopters and fosters (blog)
• 6 Tips to bring in adopters and fosters
• Transport Connection Map- BFAS

• Lifesaving protocol for at-risk dogs, Part 1 (webcast)
• Lifesaving protocol for at-risk dogs , Part 2 (webcast)
• The only protocol you’ll ever need for making behavioral euthanasia decisions (blog)
• Behavior assessments don’t work. Here’s what does (blog)