Maddie's® Insights is our ongoing webcast series with practical tips based on current research to help pets and people. Our guest speaker for the November program is @Jacklyn Ellis, PhD and the Director of Behavior at Toronto Humane Society.
This webcast was recorded on November 14, 2024 at 12n Pacific for one hour.
WATCH THE RECORDING HERE
Safeguarding the well-being of cats is essential to the mission of any responsible animal shelter. Environmental enrichment and behavior modification are often key to this goal. Measuring response to these interventions is essential to ensure strategies are successful. This webinar will present 4 ordinal rating scales designed to evaluate different expressions of cat behavior/welfare on a 0–5 scale (modified Fear, Anxiety, and Stress score; Response to Petting score; Participation in Play score; and Food Intake Summary score) that have excellent interobserver agreement and reliability, and a few other tools to describe behavior in a quantitative way. These tools are exceptionally useful to evaluate the response individual cats have to specific interventions, make decisions about which interventions should be tried first by looking at what was effective in cases presenting similarly in the past, and evaluating the efficacy of different interventions across a population of similar cats in a research project.
Can't attend live? Register anyway and you will get a link to the recording after the webcast.
What you will come away with:
- An understanding of the value of using standardized rating tools to evaluate behavior and welfare in shelters
- The ability to identify a range of practical applications for these tools, in both in the shelter and beyond
This webinar has been pre-approved for 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and by the National Animal Care & Control Association. It has also been approved for 1 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions which recognize the Registry of Approved Continuing Education (RACE) approval.
About our speaker, Jacklyn Ellis, PhD
Jacklyn is board certified by the Animal Behavior Society as a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist, is Certified in Shelter Behavior – Cat by the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants and is the Director of Behavior at Toronto Humane Society. She earned her PhD in Animal Welfare at the Atlantic Veterinary College, University of Prince Edward Island, where she conducted research on methods for reducing stress in shelter cats. Her work has been published widely in peer reviewed journals and she has presented at many national and international conferences, particularly on feline stress and elimination behavior. She has recently authored two chapters for a new edition of the leading textbook on the behavior and welfare of shelter animals.
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Alison Gibson
Media Projects Manager
Maddie's Fund
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