Lizzie, Part II

The Austin American Statesman did an article on Lizzie and the Running Buddies program, which was totally awesome and probably a big factor in our recent adoption successes. I'm hoping that it will convince staff to keep this program going, since they've recently voiced concerns about it.

I want to document an email I received from another volunteer about Lizzie when the issue of staff negativity came up:

"I had the same thing happen to me with Lizzy. She only had 2 days to go before being euthanized. I was told that [the staff evaluator] had determined that Lizzy because of her behavior would not be a good candidate for adoption. But [the staff evaluator] only observed Lizzy inside her kennel and based her decision on what she saw. Once outside Lizzy was a completely different dog. I wanted to take Lizzy home for an overnight foster and get her away from the shelter. That staff member told me to focus my attention on another dog one that had a chance of being adopted and not to work with Lizzy. As a last resort I took her out on the trail that Friday night hoping someone would see her and show some interest, with no luck. Upon returning to the shelter I met a lady and one of the staff members at the front door. The lady was waiting to see Lizzy, she saw her flyer and wanted to meet with her. She immediately fell in love with the dog and adopted Lizzy."

(Hopefully you've already read the statesman article and know what a great pet Lizzie has been with her new family.)

Evaluations/temperament testing is another issue I'd like to explore more in this blog (I'll save it for a later posting). But I just want to get this thought out: Temperament testing is a great tool for evaluating the deluge of animals that come to TLAC every day. Statistically, it may be the best way with the budget that TLAC has for deciding which animals make it to the adoption program and which get euthanized. However, there's no test that is fool-proof and will accurately predict an animal's behavior 100% of the time.