Undercover Trainers
Missed our monthly blogs on enrichment? They’re baaaaack! This one is brought to you courtesy of the ASPCA’s Trish McMillan Loehr, MSc, CPDT, Director, Applied Research and Behavior.
Photo: Richmond SPCA
It’s great to find ways to help volunteer walkers and trainers enrich shelter dogs’ lives and, most importantly, to get our dogs out of the shelter more quickly. Research has shown that dogs who are at the front of their kennels are more likely to get adopted.
One common problem, especially if staff and volunteers wear “logo shirts” or uniforms, is that our dogs then learn to come to the front of the kennel and look cute whenever they see people in these outfits. A person in bulky winter clothes? Yawn, I’ll keep sleeping. Someone with a cane? That’s weird, maybe I’ll bark at them.
The Richmond SPCA came up with an innovative solution for this common conundrum. Sarah Babcock developed a program called “Cookie Rounds” to help the adoptable dogs of the Robins-Starr Humane Center. “The plan was to build some nice ‘front of kennel’ behavior for our adoptable dogs based on pairing visitors with treats throughout the week,” says Babcock.
“We explained to staff and volunteers that although they could certainly ask for a ‘sit’ and reinforce that behavior with the treat… it was actually okay if they didn’t ask for any behavior at all. Just the pairing of visitors with treats was enough to help our dogs anticipate visitors and therefore ‘show’ better — and get adopted more quickly.”
But because their dogs really learned that “logo people” wearing uniforms were the only ones who brought treats, the Richmond dogs started showing nice kennel behavior for people wearing Richmond SPCA uniforms and ignoring the people they most needed to impress: the adopters.
“So — we created ‘undercover trainers’ to blur the distinction,” explains Babcock. Instead of wearing their logo t-shirt and fanny pack full of treats, volunteer trainers are encouraged to go through the shelter before their shift starts, doling out treats in their street clothes. Or they might wear a hat or carry an umbrella or cane from the trunk stocked with such goodies by volunteers and local thrift stores. Treats hidden in pockets or behind their backs, Richmond Undercover Trainers are able to reward dogs for coming to the front of the kennels, making eye contact, sitting, or otherwise looking cute. And the adopters notice!
Richmond SPCA’s Undercover Trainers program in action at the ASPCA Adoption Center in New York City
This program can be supplemented by putting treat buckets on the kennels, so that potential adopters can also become undercover trainers!
What are you doing to get the dogs in your shelter at the front of their kennels? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Trish McMillan Loehr, MSc, CPDT, has been working with shelter animals since 1996 and has trained dogs professionally since 1999. She also has trained horses, rats, cats and pigeons. Trish spent more than three years as the Director of Animal Behavior at the ASPCA’s 92nd St shelter, and started working as an animal behaviorist for the Animal Behavior Center in Urbana, IL, in 2009. Since then, Trish has been deployed to work with animals from hoarding and cruelty cases, has helped assess hundreds of pit bulls from dogfighting raids, and has helped with shelters in crisis. She is now the Director of Applied Research and Behavior for the Shelter R&D team.
Related links:
“Tip of the Week: Pleased to Treat You”
“If It Smells Like A Rat…”
In-Kennel Enrichment: Taming Those Canine Teens
Tags: adoption, behavior, enrichment, research, Richmond SPCA, shelter operations, volunteers
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Jackie Bell Says:
We use rabbit feeders with treats in them on our kennels with a plea to the public to ask for a sit or to reward a “quiet” and it’s amazing how many times I go back into the kennel and the dogs are all sitting quietly at the front of the kennel!