How a Denver Animal Charity Created a Training Program That Now Aids Shelters Nationwide

BRAINSTORMS

By Janet Tate

Animal shelters in the United States see more unwanted, abandoned, or abused animals pass through their doors each year than they can possibly place in suitable homes. Dumb Friends League, in Denver, is no exception: It handles more than 20,000 cats, dogs, birds, and other small animals annually. What is unusual about the league is the way it treats the animals it receives — and what it has done to improve their likelihood of adoption. With help from the Humane Society of the United States, the league’s solution has aided dozens of other shelters nationwide.

A very high percentage of animals are returned to shelters because of behavioral issues, such as aggression or refusal to use the litter box, and the Dumb Friends League had experienced its share of that problem. It also fielded frequent calls from pet owners seeking advice on animal care. In 1992, the league’s executive director, Bob Rohde, and other shelter staff members decided to try to do something about it. He and his colleagues developed a two-pronged solution: educate the public by establishing an animal-behavior help line and providing pet-care classes, and educate shelter workers in practices that help make dogs and cats easy to adopt and less likely to be given up later.

In taking the approach that behavioral issues could be tackled before they became a problem, rather than after the fact, the Dumb Friends League became a pioneer in its approach to shelter management. “This type of program had not been done in any area, anywhere before,” says Kit Jenkins, who taught training sessions at the league for eight years.

The league started its groundbreaking programs with funds from its existing budget, and no additional staff members were hired to train workers. However, the league did hire of an additional full-time employee to handle the help line, a service that is now performed by trained volunteers.

Going Nationwide

Ms. Jenkins says she approached the Humane Society of the United States about taking the league’s program to the national level. A spokesperson for the humane society recalls it differently, saying that the national group approached the Denver shelter first. But regardless of who initiated contact between the two groups, momentum began to build to create a program that would aid shelter workers around the country. “At first, what we saw as animal-shelter problems on the local level, we soon realized, were really issues for all animal shelters, everywhere,” Ms. Jenkins says. “So we wondered, how can we implement programs of this type in the most efficient way all over the country?” The answer was to team up with the humane society to create Pets for Life, a training program that is now offered to shelter staff members and volunteers nationwide. (It has also trained shelter workers from Canada and Hong Kong.)

“Our involvement with the league began when their president spoke with our vice president about their program. This started the wheels going: How could we get others to get involved?” says Nancy Peterson, the humane society’s coordinator for the Pets for Life National Training Center. The humane society took charge of inviting potential attendees to participate in the program, which went nationwide in March 2000. It provides guidelines to shelter directors about what to consider when picking staff members or volunteers for training. “We mainly want trainees to learn how to advise people on the issues, so that if they don’t know the answer, they can either find out the correct information or refer the caller to somebody else who can,” Ms. Peterson says.

In the past two years, Pets for Life has provided training for more than 200 animal-care professionals. Now underwritten by grants from a number of sources, including the Kenneth A. Scott Charitable Trust and Hill’s Science Diet pet food, the intensive, two-week training program is held four times a year in Denver at the Dumb Friends League. The supporting grants cover airfare for one program participant (each shelter can send up to two workers), as well as hotel accommodations, meals, and all training-related costs.

The nature of animal adoptions has changed over the years, in large part due to the success of spaying and neutering programs, says Kerry Muhovich, a veterinarian who serves as the league’s animal-behavior education coordinator. Now, instead of dealing with as many puppies and kittens as they once did, shelters are charged with finding homes mostly for cats and dogs over the age of six months, which means that the need for animal-behavior training and advice is more important than ever, says Dr. Muhovich.

“The program gave our organization a broader perspective on how to solve problems in proactive, rather than reactive, ways,” says Christy Smith, director of the Potter League for Animals in Newport, R.I. “We saw ways to prevent situations and correct problems when we get them, in the shelters.” Ms. Smith says she believes the training program has helped her shelter find ways to keep at least some of their adopted-out animals from being returned.

Unclear Results

Quantifying the results a shelter might expect to see because of training its workers through Pets for Life and instituting its ideas has proved difficult for the program’s organizers, because the shelters also must contend with numerous outside forces that can have an effect on their work, according to Ms. Peterson. For example, the Dumb Friends League reports that its animal population has increased each year for the last several years — but then, the metropolitan Denver population has increased each year, too, says Kristina Vourax, the league’s communications director. But last year, the league also fielded 8,623 phone calls from concerned pet owners and reports that more than 20 percent of the people they advised have been able to keep their pets as a direct result of the help-line information. And last year it experienced its best ever adoption rate: Sixty-eight percent, with 16,365 pets being placed in homes out of the 24,010 brought to the shelter, according to Ms. Vourax, an achievement the league attributes to its help line and staff training.

Animal shelters have notoriously high staff-turnover rates, and neither the Dumb Friends League nor the Humane Society of the United States has been able to calculate whether the shelters that have participated in the program have improved their abilities to retain workers. But the program’s proponents says that helping employees do their jobs better — by providing them with a broader understanding of what they’re doing and a clearer sense of purpose — might help shelters keep their staff members around longer. And, as Ms. Smith observes, once an employee has gone through the Pets for Life program, it is more important than ever to “try to keep the person in whom you’ve invested energy and training on your staff.” She recommends that shelters send two staff members to the training program, and carefully choose those who might be most interested, in order to derive the greatest long-term benefit from their training.

Dr. Muhovich cautions other shelters that would like to emulate the success of the Dumb Friends League’s program to approach such an undertaking “enthusiastically, but with baby steps.” She adds: “This type of thing comes from the conglomeration of little impressive programs, not from just launching a big impressive program from the beginning. Don’t bite off more than you can chew in the very beginning. Put your basic components in place: Teach ‘Piece A’ in-house, over and over again. Maybe you take it on the road a couple of times to find out how it plays elsewhere. That way, you’ll have much more success.”

Do you work at an animal shelter or other animal-related charity? What kinds of training would be most helpful to you and your colleagues? Tell us your ideas on the Share Your Brainstorms online forum.