I’m volunteering my time to work with rescued dogs. Some dogs need special attention to help make them adoptable. I worked with such a dog this morning. After several weeks of lessons, once per week, it is becoming obvious he needs to be in a foster situation where I can give the foster volunteer specific daily homework. Even though he makes small improvements each time I work with him while he is in boarding, this situation is dragging out way too long. I can only work with him once per week, but that effort is being mostly overridden by the rest of the time he is in boarding. I feel sorry for him.
With most rescue organizations, including the big ones, I observe the behavior teams mean well, but they lack even the necessary elements of an understanding of dog behavior and behavior modification. In other words, they often don’t know what they’re doing.
Here’s a simple example. Most shelters have available slip leads for volunteers to use when walking or working with dogs. Unfortunately, these are among the most punishing of devices available. These leashes choke the dogs, especially the fearful ones, and make the dogs worse over time. Every time these dogs balk or pull on the leash, they get strangled. Volunteers slip these things on, hold the dogs tight to their hips, and think they are training the dogs to walk nicely. Instead, they are inflicting a punishing regimen of entrapment on the dog, making the dog more fearful, reactive, and less willing to walk alongside anyone. That’s not the way to teach a dog to walk nicely on a leash.
I also see dogs with other training issues that need to be addressed, such as happily waiting to be leashed; not bolting in or out of a doorway or kennel; no jumping; solving nuisance or reactive barking or lunging; taking treats gently; learning to Come, Sit, Down, and Heel; no mouthing; and knowing how to self-entertain. Every day a dog is in a shelter it is taking up space that could be used for the next dog. What happens when the municipal shelters get full? They start killing dogs for space. What happens when the rescue organizations get full? They can’t pull new pets out of the municipal shelters. What happens when dogs aren’t yet ready for adoption events? Rescues and shelters must warehouse them and waste precious space and resources. A lot of this bottleneck can be opened through good, basic, correct training.
Most training in these environments harkens back to obsolete stuff that’s been done for a century. New methods and exercises are available, mostly revolving around positive reinforcement and proper, timely correction techniques. The puzzle is how to get more dogs rehabilitated and out of the system. The answer to the puzzle is for these organizations to update what they are doing. The old ways don’t work, and never did work.