Angel City Pit Bulls: Play Group Training Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

We used the grant to cover the tuition for one of our volunteers to attend the Dogs Playing for Life mentorship 1 at Austin Pets Alive!

This grant helped us gain more knowledge and hands-on experience to continue and expand our playgroup program at our organization. The volunteer we sent walked away with more confidence in how to assess and build a yard of dogs, so that more dogs have more chances to play, and dogs in need of building more social skills can be supported through that process. We also learned new training techniques for the kennel environment that will help our volunteers work with our dogs in a more consistent manner. We hope that the combined effect will be happier dogs who know what's expected of them, resulting in quicker adoptions!

How many pets did this grant help?

Our projected intake is about 200+ pit bull-type dogs for this year; most, if not all, of those dogs will be in playgroups at some point.

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Carter (first and second photos) is one of our current foster dogs who is reactive on leash. While we knew this wasn’t a good indication of his sociability, before having playgroups, we struggled to find a way to introduce him to other dogs (and counsel possible foster or adoptive homes on what could be a good match for him). Using Dogs Playing for Life playgroups, we were able to get Carter in the yard with other dogs and found out that, not only does he love other dogs, but he has some of the best off-leash social skills of our foster dogs! Carter has not been adopted yet, but is currently in a foster home with another dog and loving it! He frequently comes by our facility to “help out” with playgroups. Meet Carter here.