Scratchings-and-Sniffings

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Training and Adoption Rates Posted: 15 Sep 2009 11:32 AM PDT We've got some friends visiting from Alabama. One of them is trying to get a spay/ neuter program up and running in her county. She works in county government and one of her tasks is to try to get adoption rates up at the local animal shelter. Sometimes she'll put out press releases stating that x number of dogs and cats will be euthanized by 5 PM tomorrow unless people come in and adopt them soon. She's had good success with this technique, but she can't use it too often. According to Nancy, people get what she calls "compassion fatigue" after a while. I read an interesting article in a professional journal that might help the cause. We've discussed before how behavior problems are the number one reason pets get left for adoption at animal shelters. Well, according to this study the behavior of dogs waiting to be adopted is very crucial to adoption success. Potential adopters are more concerned with how these dogs behave than even what breed or mixture of breeds they are. This study evaluated the effects of basic obedience training and "environmental enhancement" on adoption rates for 180 randomly selected dogs. Dogs were assigned to either a trained or control group for an 8 week period.   The trained dogs were handled once a day for about twenty minutes. They were taught to walk on lead, sit on command, not to jump up and to come to the front of the run when someone walked by. The environmental enhancement included providing toys and blankets, using colored cage cards and adding artificial plants to the area where the dogs were kept.   By the end of the study 116 had been adopted, 57 were euthanized, 4 went to rescue groups, 2 were returned to their owners and one died.    The authors concluded that the trained dogs were 1.4 times more likely to be adopted and that their behavior was the key to the higher adoption rate. I guess that old saying my Mom used to tell me about not getting a second chance to make a good first impression is true. A dog that comes to the front of the cage and sits there looking up expectantly is hard to turn down and when they don't jump all over you when you open the kennel door, so much the better.   It's a great lesson for humane organizations to learn and adopt. Twenty minutes a day can have a big impact on adoption rates. And when you consider that of the 3 to 4 million dogs that get left at animal shelters each year almost half end up being euthanized, increasing the adoption rate by a factor of 1.4 would save a lot of lives.

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