Phoenix Blog Competition: Working to Address Stress
By Jerri Colonna
I am a shelter volunteer on the behavior and enrichment team at Indianapolis Animal Care Services (IACS) and we have worked very hard as volunteers to develop some great enrichment for our dogs. We are a very large inner city, open intake shelter and many of our dogs only ...
A Foot in the Door
By Tabitha Davies
Shelter is defined as a place to rest, a place for comfort and a place for safety. But with 3.9 million dogs entering shelters and an average of 1.2 million of them being euthanized each year (Source: ASPCA), this is sadly not the case for many dogs in US shelters. Life in ...
Lessons from the COVID-19 Crisis
By Veronica Boutelle
I have loved and served this industry for 20 years, but I have never been prouder to be part of it than I am in this moment.
I’m writing this from my home office in late April while sheltered in place. You’re probably reading it sometime in July. I’ve no way of ...
Target Practice
By Lara Joseph
Training animals to target makes husbandry a lot less stressful and much safer. It is also a useful tool to have at your disposal in an emergency situation. But first, let’s define some of the terms:
Targeting is getting an animal (or human) to touch a predetermined body ...
Surviving the Storm
By Gail Radtke
Looking back to March-April time, it seems like the entire dog training business as we know it pretty much crashed overnight. As COVID-19 started to take hold, decisions had to be made fast – especially for those of us who run a business at a physical location that is under ...
Everything Was Fine Until…
By Suzanne Clothier
Does this sound familiar? "Everything was fine until... [fill in months, age, event]." It’s a statement that is common, and sometimes accepted without much thought. For example, a client might tell us that their puppy was a saint until he turned 7 months old. Or that ...
Is My Dog in Pain?
By Robyn Lowe
Every single dog is unique and every arthritis story is different. Some dogs are stoic and will hide symptoms and others will show very early on that they are in pain. We know that dogs all experience pain differently, X-rays may look horrendous on one dog but clinically they ...
Muzzles Schmuzzles…Not “Just Another Piece of Kit!”
Saying the word “muzzle,” suggesting the use of and/or using one, or seeing a dog wearing one can have negative connotations for some. But why? Perhaps because we have become used to seeing guard dogs or so-called aggressive dogs wearing them. They are used by the military, armed forces and ...