Animal Welfare Professionals

What is your favorite thing you've learned in our field so far this year?

Whether you're a new volunteer or foster caregiver or you're a long-time animal welfare professional, share your fun fact or favorite learning moment below. 

Our new volunteer coordinator learned about and implemented a "field trip" program for our dogs. We call it Doggy's Day Out and we allow our volunteers to take dogs out for a few hours or overnight. I know it's not a new concept, but it's new for us, and the pictures and stories about our dogs' adventures are just awesome! We are also getting some new and wonderful volunteers. I encourage everyone to give it a try.

I'm an administrative intern with a shelter in Colorado. I'm in college to be an economist so I never intended to touch the world of animal welfare. What started as a summer internship to check a box on a resume has turned into the most wonderful experience imaginable. Aside from getting to play with amazing dogs everyday, I have come to appreciate the importance of the animal welfare industry. From improving public health to helping direct resources to underserved communities, animal welfare makes our communities better. I have a new found respect for everyone involved with animal welfare and hope to stay connected to this industry for years to come.

I always am surpised and heartened by how many people want to help and give, they are just waiting to be asked. It actually makes them feel great. It's just a reminder to always ask!

Mine came at the Conference. I attended a session on fundraising for municipal organizations. It was something I originally thought was not possible, but I took it back to my county and was told that operating within certain tight restrictions that we could indeed fundraise. Now the County Administrator has authorized us to look into getting such a program off the ground. Game changer for our ability to do things the taxpayers are unwilling to fund!

That's SO exciting! Congrats, Scott!

After using de-worming tablet, one of my rescues aquired diarrhea ( severe). After a visit to the Vet. I was told that de-wormers can kill the good normal flora (bacteria) in the gut causing diarrhea. Replenish with probiotics and voila no more diarrhea💩

Fortiflora or any other probiotic will replenish the good gut bacteria and help with diarrhea.

I am meeting more and more vegan rescuers.  Which I think is wonderful.

I am learning to not be so hard on myself.  I know that we do our best with what we have and no matter what the public may think of us sometimes, we have far more supporters than detractors, and I am so thankful for that.

I learned about Doobert.com for helping coordinate animal transport, and MaddiesUniversity.org for free continuing education 

Mine came from the Best Friends conference, that we can create training videos so we don't have to actually spend human hours doing some of it.  It's a great way to leverage our people resources.

The importance of an open mind, observation skills, and life-long learning. Specifically, I have lived and worked with cats my whole life, and am still humbled by how much there is to learn - this year, specifically I've learned more about cat behavior and training - catifying and clicker training, for example, and how it can help improve human-cat relationships and positive outcomes for fosters and adopters. 

That just when you think you have nothing more to stretch, you can always finds another quarter to put in the machine.  Especially if it means saving a life.

At the HSUS Animal Care Expo, I attended a class on Kitten Kindergartens put on by the San Francisco SPCA.  I learned a lot about how trainable cats and kittens can be and I can't wait to implement some of these ideas into our program!  We don't have a building (yet) or the necessary experience to hold these for the public the way SFSPCA does, but I think it will really set our adoptable cats and kittens apart from the crowd if they can show off their training skills!  Not only does Kitten Kindergarten work with socialization and training kittens to like their carriers (and become used to a harness) but it also teaches the kitties how to work with target and clicker training so they can be taught 'tricks' like sit, place, high five, etc.  Right now we're up to our ears in kitten season, but when it slacks off a bit, I know I'll be working with my 'leftovers' to teach them some cute tricks that can get them adopted when they're no longer tiny and adorable.

On the less fun side, I learned in one of the shelter medicine track classes that vaccinations, at least for shelter babies, have now been recommended to go out to 5 months, whereas the previous recommendation was 4 months.  It's not a fun, happy thing, but it may save more kittens in our program from panleukopenia.  Before I'd attended the conference, I had lost a 4 month old to panleuk (with about 5 vaccinations under her belt, too!) and was facing questions from the executive director about how the kitten had gotten sick.  I knew already that even at 4 months, with many iterations of vaccines, there was a chance that her maternal immunity had prevented the vaccines from 'taking' but now I know for sure, that maternal antibodies CAN hang around that long!  It's apparently fairly uncommon, but enough of a possibility for the speakers, who I think were from UW this year..to recommend vaccinating until 5 months.

Really two things.  One - patience does have its rewards and Two - area rescues are beginning to collaborate with us.  A huge step for this area.  It took three years of patience - but yes - - it has paid off.  We're in Northeast Oklahoma - - PAAS,

My favorite learning moment came at the Best Friends Conference this year when we found out that our state, Arizona, was light green on the Map to No-Kill by 2025! Way to go AZ!

I started studying animal behavior with the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants (IAABC) in January, and one of the things that really stands out is the importance of the applying the animal behavior "ABC" model:  Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence when we assess and/or attempt to modify the behavior of shelter animals (any animals, really).  Behavior never happens in isolation. There is always an antecedent that triggers the behavior and a consequence that reinforces it.  If we can accurately identify the "A" and "C", then we have a much better chance of helping the shelter animals in our care.