Learn Some New Moves and Create the Change You Want to See with the Spring 2023 Shelter Summit and Fast Tracks

There’s a new, different, better experience coming to the Maddie’s® Million Pet Challenge Learniverse this March, and it’s designed with your feedback, your busy schedules, and your big goals in mind.

The Spring 2023 Shelter Summit and Fast Tracks will give you the opportunity to learn by doing, create the change you want to see at your shelter, and go further together with your colleagues and the support of expert coaches.

#ThankstoMaddie, participation in the Shelter Summit and Fast Tracks is absolutely free and everyone is welcome! Register for the Summit now to maximize your resources and set yourself and your shelter up to thrive during kitten season and beyond.

The Shelter Summit will be recorded in case you can’t attend live and has been pre-approved for CAWA and NACA CE credit; RACE approval is pending.

More details at www.sheltersummit.com

Times are tough for shelter dogs. We can help. Maddie’s® Million Pet Challenge and Human Animal Support Services have teamed up to bring you a completely FREE, two-day virtual conference to tackle your biggest challenges surrounding big dogs. The sessions are available on-demand 24/7 so you can attend when it’s right for you, no matter what your time zone is. We’ve got proven solutions and data-driven protocols delivered to you in straightforward, streamlined modules for all levels of animal shelter professionals. We want your organizations to be supported as you learn better dog management, getting more live outcomes, shortening lengths of stay, and creating safer shelters. This conference has been pre-approved for 8 hours of Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credit by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and National Animal Care & Control Association. Each hour-long block in this conference has been approved for 1 hour of continuing education credit until February 14, 2024 in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval.

Offering the Right Care means animals are not left in dangerous circumstances to cause harm, suffer, or die because the shelter can’t admit them; nor are they are admitted to a crowded shelter when there are better options within the community. You’re doing this work because you want to serve animals and people in the shelter and in the community, but in order to provide the best care, you have to know—and make sure you’re operating within—your capacity for care. Within the shelter’s walls, the Right Care encompasses staffing, housing and programs to meet each animal’s basic needs. In this webinar, you’ll learn how to provide humane housing and match community need to community capacity and shelter services to ensure all animals receive the care that is right for them. The four “Right” webinars were presented as a series, “The Future Is Four: The Right Care in the Right Place at the Right Time to the Right Outcome.”

 

From the team that brought you the Million Cat Challenge, it’s Maddie’s® Million Pet Challenge! #ThanksToMaddie, the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, the Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Program at UF, Team Shelter USA and the Open Door Veterinary Collective are partnering to expand the Challenge to include dogs and integrating access to care. The Maddie’s® Million Pet Challenge team is offering a variety of pro bono learning opportunities that include shelter consultations, online bootcamp training, sustainable access to veterinary care mentorships, and programs for veterinarians and students. Join Dr. Sara Pizano, animal welfare strategist and author of “The Best Practice Playbook for Animal Shelters” as she explains the details of the new program and how to apply. Dr. Pizano will be joined by Dr. Cynthia D. Delany, Director of Online Learning at UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, who will introduce the Learniverse, an interactive, online learning community found at the intersection of Knowing and Doing. Hosted by a team of animal welfare’s leading experts, it is a space to question, test, and implement innovations in the pursuit of continuous discovery and improvement in animal sheltering.

Everyone is welcome!

Like most industries, the last three years of animal sheltering have been unprecedented. Your organization has been collecting data, but how does it compare to organizations in your community or across the country? How can we use this data to better plan for the future of animal welfare? Join us for a panel discussion on the last three years of national animal sheltering data, hosted by Petheath Inc’s Senior Vice President of Software Solutions, Steve Zeidman. He will be joined with special guests, Brent Toellner from Best Friends Animal Society, Dr. Julie Levy of the University of Florida Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program and Kristen Hassen from American Pets Alive!.

Don’t miss it: For the first time, we present data specifically on bully breed dogs.The link to the recorded webinar is found in the February 16, 2022 blog post.

Get to efficient and effective daily population management rounds in just six weeks! The impact on your team and your work will be big: You’ll improve animal health and welfare, increase the number of animals and people you can help, and decrease staff workload and burnout, length of stay, and the number of animals waiting in your shelter. Click Learn More to find out more about Population Management & Daily Rounds Bootcamp and sign up for the waiting list.

 

UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program Director of Online Learning Cindi Delany, DVM, KPA-CPT, developed this brand new Bootcamp to help your shelter assess and consider how you can level up your Behavior, Training, and Enrichment (BTE) program. This immersive and coach-guided course will do more than help you identify new ways to improve animal wellness. It will also get you started making those improvements in less than 2 months (and, your coaches will continue to support you once Bootcamp is over). Click Learn More to find out more about BTE Bootcamp and sign up for the waiting list.

 

Learning how to quit crisis mode, embrace your capacity, and create space for lasting change is the core of Four Rights Bootcamp, a transformative six-week journey charted by us, and the time for your shelter to join is now. We’ve taken the initiatives that powered over 1500 shelters to save over 3.5 million cat lives and expanded them to include all animals at risk in our communities. We believe every shelter, including yours, should be able to provide every animal with the Right Care in the Right Place, at the Right Time, and to the Right Outcome, and we’ve designed this Bootcamp to give you the tools and the support to sidestep the daily churn and make a plan for putting the most impactful initiatives into practice at your shelter. Click Learn More to find out more about Four Rights Bootcamp and sign up for the waiting list.

We’re excited to announce a new opportunity where we’ve expanded our team and focus to include combined shelter and community veterinary services consultations for dogs and cats. Is your community ready to implement sustainable veterinary services and increase access to care? Is your shelter ready to take your lifesaving to the next level? Thanks to the generosity of Maddie’s Fund^®, the Maddie’s^® Million Pet Challenge is offering this unique combination consultation completely free of charge to create sustainable animal welfare systems in communities across the US!

Are you ready to open a veterinary clinic with a focus on increasing access to care or take your existing clinic to the next level but not exactly sure where to start? You bring the desire, we’ll bring the team of experts! Thanks to the generosity of Maddie’s Fund^®, the Maddie’s^® Million Pet Challenge is offering organizations opening access to care veterinary clinics an array of opportunities, including a full consultation led by experts completely free of charge. Priority is being given to organizations that can also participate in the Sheltering portion of the Challenge with Team Shelter USA, although standalone consultations are also available.

Is your shelter looking to improve operations and boost lifesaving, but not sure how to get started? If you’re ready to address issues around intake policies, housing/enrichment, community cat program management, budgeting, access to spay/neuter and veterinary care, and more, then a Comprehensive Shelter Consultation is right for you! Thanks to the generosity of Maddie’s Fund^®, the Maddie’s^® Million Pet Challenge is offering Comprehensive Shelter Consultations, which provide expertise and make recommendations in the areas of facility design, intake policies, housing/enrichment, population management, community cat programs, public policy and enforcement programs, budgeting, management of employees and volunteers, access to focused spay/neuter and subsidized veterinary care, and physical and behavioral wellness. Comprehensive Shelter Consultations are led by experts with decades of combined experience and are completely free of charge.

Are you ready for your organization to make changes, but you aren’t sure how to get started? Could you use an expert to help you analyze and prioritize your issues? Could you use support in implementing new approaches? Then a Focused Consultation is tailored just for you! Thanks to the generosity of Maddie’s Fund^®, the Maddie’s^® Million Pet Challenge is offering Focused Shelter Consultations tailored for the priorities and opportunities identified by the participating animal shelters. Focused Shelter Consultations are led by experts with decades of combined experience and are completely free of charge.

Are you ready to increase your observation skills, research capability, knowledge of shelter operations guidelines, communication skills, animal data interpretation, and analysis of shelter systems to help make shelters more efficient, safer, and better at helping animals and their people? You bring the motivation and we’ll bring an immersive training experience! Thanks to the generosity of Maddie’s Fund^®, the Maddie’s^® Million Pet Challenge is offering skilled animal welfare professionals the opportunity for self-study and immersive onsite experience with a consultation team, free of charge.

How do you determine the “Right Place” for an animal at risk of entering the shelter? In this course, you will learn the framework that allows you to remove decision fatigue and get animals where they need to be—or help them right where they are.

As part of the Maddie’s®️ Million Pet Challenge’s Learniverse program, subject matter experts from the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program will discuss guiding principles that animal welfare professionals can use to make decisions, train their staff and engage the public.

You’ll also learn about programs you can use at your shelter to lead animals to the right outcome while making the best possible use of your resources and reducing the burden on your staff. Finally, you’ll see how other animal shelters have successfully implemented these programs.

The “Right Time” is the time that best allows services to be provided in alignment with animal and human need and shelter capacity. Within the shelter, it includes setting open hours and offering services by appointment, as well as managing animals in care through pathway planning, hold periods, and daily welfare rounds, components critical to moving animals as quickly as possible to positive outcomes. Whether we’re talking about the hours our shelter is open or the demands on our staff time, the system we build directly impacts the time an animal spends in our shelter.

In this course, you’ll learn strategies for streamlining tasks, reducing length of stay, and making the most of the resources you have. You’ll also learn about interventions you can make at your shelter to lead animals to the right outcome at the right time, and you’ll see how other animal shelters have successfully made changes to improve services in their communities.

The Right Outcome is the one that best supports the well-being of animals, honors the connections between humans and pets, stabilizes communities, and maintains public health and safety. When we serve animals in the right place, at the right time, and provide the right care while working within our capacity, we make it possible to achieve the right outcome.

This course discusses Return-to-Home principles as well as barriers to adoption from animal shelters and strategies for avoiding decision fatigue while making decisions with compassion, empathy, and clarity.

Offering the “Right Care” means animals are not left in dangerous circumstances to cause harm, suffer, or die because the shelter can’t admit them; nor are they admitted to a crowded shelter. In this course, we’re going to talk about matching community need to community capacity and shelter capacity and services to ensure that all animals receive the care that is right for them while prioritizing Right Care and wellness for our staff too.

In this course, you’ll learn principles of humane housing for dogs and cats as well as strategies for strengthening staff well-being and maximizing your capacity to care for animals, with the goal of ensuring animals and people at your shelter can thrive.

What is a “Finder Foster” program – how does it work, how long do finders need to hold an animal and what are other important legal aspects of these programs?

In this course you’ll learn how Finder Foster programs can help you reunite more animals with their families, promote animal well-being and minimize stress by reducing time spent in the shelter, and reserve resources for animals who really do need to come in—all by engaging people who are already helping animals in your community.

We’ve asked a legal expert to help us understand these important details. We’ll be using the state of California and its legal requirements for these programs as an example. You’ll want to speak to your own legal counsel to make sure your area (state, county, city or other locality) doesn’t have different regulations in place.

Have you tried everything you can think of to connect with your community? Have you reduced barriers to fostering and adoption and still animals are sitting? In this 60-minute webinar, we’ll explore what might be keeping people who want to foster or adopt from coming to your shelter, and we’ll share three of the most impactful and untapped practices you can use to encourage engagement across your community.