Georgetown Shelter Dogs Now Receive Training

We (staff and volunteers) have been busy with our “Working Minds” dog training program, taught to us by Training by Tara. The results have been amazing, with the dogs “getting it” so quickly. The dogs are being taught kennel manners and loose leash walking. I’ve already seen results with a dog that recently got adopted and the people said they adopted it because “it was so well trained”. The volunteers have taken a very active role in this training and are even coming here in the mornings to help feed the dogs. The dogs all have to sit quiet before they get their food, as well as sitting quiet to be leashed up and then walk nicely on a leash.

Not only is this program wonderful for the dogs behavior it also empowers the volunteers – now they know the time they spend with the dogs is making a difference – a trained dog will have a much better chance of being adopted. Now the volunteers have the tools to teach the dogs, as well as feel more confident that now they can handle even the more challenging dogs (wild child as I call them).

And the 2nd best part of all of this – is now the volunteers have taken on the roles of being “the trainer”. They want to train all our new dog walkers as well as long time walkers – we want to make sure everyone is on the same page so all dogs are trained in the same way.

Tara is using our shelter as an example to other shelters – which is very cool – one of my goals is to be the shelter that other shelters emulate!

ATTENTION ALL SHELTER DOG WALKERS

Since we have now started using this new training program we want everyone that walks dogs to be on the page – using the same techniques. Therefore if you are a dog walker and have not received this training from Tara, Debbie Thompson or myself please arrange to come back in for training. Debbie Thompson (who graciously has offered to train volunteers) is here each Monday and Friday morning and will be happy to train you (she is usually here from 8am til Noon). If you cannot make it during the week she will also be having a training session on Aug 6th @ 1pm (at the shelter). Please call or email me and let me know when you will be coming in.

Statistics for June

• Impounds: 161 animals
• Adopted: 65 animals
• Euthanized: 12% (this is down 11% from last year) – even though we didn’t realize our goal of 10% or less – still a good month considering all the cats coming in.

SHELTER IMPROVEMENTS

The outside of the shelter is currently being painted – good-bye salmon color. Painting should be completed within 2 weeks. The “Friends of the Georgetown Animal Shelter” purchased a hydraulic surgery table that we received this week. I’m sure our Vet’s back will love it! Thank you to “The Friends”.

DOGS TO RESCUE

We were very lucky last week that Laura Hobgood-Oster and Beth Kosar arranged to get 12 of our dogs to rescue groups – thank you so much to both of them. This summer has been hard on all shelters in the area with huge numbers of dogs coming in. We are very grateful when a rescue group can help us by taking a dog and freeing up cage space for us.

ART FOR ANIMALS

Art for Animals 2011 is only 3 months away. If you were going to make something to donate to us, start working! Everyone that donates art gets two free tickets to the event. We need donations of any kind of art form, from sewing, quilting, jewelry making, stained glass, photography, painting, drawing, clay and ceramics. The deadline for donating art is October 1st 2011. We also still need volunteers to help us plan Art for Animals. Please email me and let me know you would like to help – this would be a great way for new volunteers to get involved.

Try to stay cool during these oppressively hot days.