Gabe update

I've had Gabe for about 6 weeks now. We had 3 private lessons with Lee Mannix about 2 weeks ago. When he first met Gabe, he told me that I'll be as trained as one of his interns by the time I'm finished with him. But the little guy is incredibly smart and is picking this up really fast. Lee was surprised at how fast he was learning to relax when other dogs came near, instead of going crazy. At home, certain behaviors, like jumping on me or barking at my other dogs to get them to play have completely ended. In fact, he quit doing those after just one time-out.

Outside, at my house, is a different story. He still barks at everything. I'm just not getting through to him. I understand that if a dog knows to do something in one situation, it will not automaticallly translate to other situations. I know that you have to teach a dog to do that behavior in many different situations before they can generalize. He was perfect at the trainer's, but he's just not getting it at home and I'm at a loss for what I could be doing better.

It's frustrating because I'm leaving town in a few weeks for a long trip and I just want him to be "fixed" so he can get adopted by then. I'm sure that this attitude is what is slowing down his progress. If I can figure out where he can go when I leave, if he's not adopted by then, I will probably be much less stressed about it. If my only option is to put him back in the shelter (and possibly face euthanasia while I'm gone), I'll have to cancel the trip I've been planning for years. I'm working with tlac staff on this now.

Tlac staff, by the way, have been incredible. They've reimbursed me for $235 of training costs (which is only a fraction of what it would have cost if Lee hadn't given us such amazing deals). They've been really supportive and thankful the whole time. I get to take Gabe on tv next Friday (hopefully he won't be a holy terror). I usually get the feeling that they aren't crazy about volunteers putting so much time into just a few problem dogs, but I haven't felt that way at all in this situation.

Gabe is at daycare today with Lee Mannix. Daycare at Lee Mannix's isn't like doggie daycare at other places. The day is spent on training and working on the dog's specific issues, rather than just playing with other dogs. Hopefully, this will help us all figure out how I can teach him not to react when outside at my house. We also have 3 more lessons coming up and he's enrolled in a 6-week group class after that (which may have to be postponed if he's not adopted because I won't be in town to take him).

Lee Mannix and his trainers have all been amazing, too. They've given us really, really cheap training and have gone out of their way to make this work. And if Gabe needs even more training, one of their trainers started Schrodi's fund, to help pay for training for dogs like Gabe.

So, everyone has been incredibly helpful and Gabe has learned a ton in the last few weeks. If I didn't have this damn deadline looming over my head, I'd probably be viewing this situation completely differently.

Gabe

In a super-cool move by staff, I was allowed to take home and foster Gabe, a dog who was not doing well at the shelter. We've had him for almost a week and he's quite a handful. He's incredibly reactive to everything. It could be night, before bed, everyone's snoozing on the couch/dog beds and he hears a dog bark a mile away and he's up and barking. Trying to drive with him in the car is bound to get me in a wreck. Forget trying to walk him. His last owners tried to deal with this problem with a shock collar, which obviously didn't help because they still returned him to the shelter.

We had a consultation last night with one of Lee Mannix's trainers. She evaluated him and told me that he has an extreme level of frustration and no idea what to do with it, which is causing this behavior. Staff noticed that he had no interest in toys at the shelter, which was odd. We will be working on getting him interested in toys and games in the next 2-3 weeks. No affection unless he has a toy in his mouth and all food must be worked for - put into a puzzle that he has to figure out to get the food. We'll go back to the trainer in 2-3 weeks to work on the reactivity problem. Until then, we have to avoid his triggers, which is going to be a challenge since everything triggers him. Even after just one day, though, he already seems less reactive in the house. I filled up a kong with a delicious treat and he worked on that on our drive over to doggy-daycare today - he didn't bark once.

I'm feeling really optimistic that he'll be highly adoptable in a few weeks. We tried getting some pictures of him, but he was too hyper and they didn't turn out well, which is too bad because he is SO CUTE. He's a great size, too - just 30 lbs at 9 months. Once his frustration levels drop and his reactivity goes away, people are going to be fighting to adopt him.

This is really important because the volunteers have been wanting to have a foster program for a really long time and staff has never been for it. It's an important part of the No-Kill Equation. Staff has mentioned that they are interested in trying this on a limited basis. I want them to see how well this can work so that they will let us do more of it.

Lizzie

We had a bit of an emergency situation with a young, pit mix named Lizzie this week. She'd been at TLAC since October and had been very cute and fun. I couldn't understand why she hadn't been adopted yet, except that she barked and acted crazy inside of her kennel. Once outside, though, she was a different dog. She was calm, sweet, good on the leash, great manners, smart, silly...

All of a sudden this week, her entire personality changed. She was lethargic and wasn't interested in being with people. Perhaps she was sick, but the animal behaviorist on staff thought she had kennel stress and was really depressed. Makes sense to me. On Wednesday night, staff notified us that if she wasn't adopted by the weekend, she would be euthanized. We volunteers jumped into high-gear and did whatever we could think of to help her. We put up flyers all over town. Some offered to foster Lizzie at their house, until we could find a home. Many offered donations to sponsor her - to attract a rescue group to come and rescue her.

(The donations part will come up later in the post, so I want to add a little more about that here. All rescue groups are low on cash and over-full on dogs. It's common for people to "sponsor" a dog that they really like, but can't foster themselves, in order to entice another group to pull the dog. We volunteers have done that a couple of times in the last few months. We gather up a pool of donations and then send out a plea to the rescue groups. It usually works.)

Thursday night we got wonderful news. First, staff (some on their holiday vacations) discussed the issue and decided to allow a volunteer to foster Lizzie. Fostering our dogs is something the volunteers have wanted to do for a long time. TLAC staff decided to let a volunteer foster a dog for the first time a few weeks ago and it worked wonderfully, and at our last meeting, they mentioned continuing with this on a limited basis.

However, right after we found out that we could take her home and foster her, someone came in, who saw a flyer, and wanted to adopt her!! She's going home today!!

Of course, we are all thrilled. Then, this morning, we get this email from TLAC staff:

Donations: When the information was posted regarding Lizzie's status, several of you offered to donate funds for her placement. Financial donations are always accepted but should not be dedicated to the care of one specific animal. The Pet Placement donation account helps to provide care for their medical needs, medical reatments, grooming needs, dental care, etc.

Euthanaisa Decision: When the staff makes the difficult decision to pull an animal from the adoption program for euthanasia, it is made with careful consideration about what is best for the animal. These situations are not about what is best or easiest on our own human emotions but on the needs of the animals. It is already very difficult to make these decisions and we respectfully ask that you trust the TLAC Management Team to always do what is best for the approximate 25,000 animals annually entrusted in our care.

What You Can DO: As a volunteer, you can help by staying committed to the opportunities that you have as a volunteer. Sign up on the Yahoo Group calendar for a regular, steady time to volunteer. Interact with the animals AND with the people that are looking to adopt one of our animals in a positive, proactive manner of customer service. Market the attributes of the dogs to potential customers.

After getting Lizzie adopted in a day and avoiding euthanasia, this is the only correspondence we received from staff on this matter.

Why the defensiveness? No one questioned staff when told that Lizzie couldn't remain in the shelter past the weekend. No one accused staff of anything. We heard that Lizzie was in trouble and we did what we could to get her out of the shelter environment asap. We greatly appreciate staff giving us the head's up about Lizzie's situation and then giving us permission to foster her (although, they only allowed the fostering after we pressed for it; they could have easily offered it up themselves, but did not).

This staff/volunteer relations issue is very interesting to me and is the one of the topics I'll be exploring further with this blog.

I'll just end this post now with "WAY TO GO, LIZZIE!!"