Prairie Paws Animal Shelter: Dogs Playing for Life Mentorship Grant Report

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

We were ecstatic to be able to send Tim, our director of operations, to the week-long Dogs Playing for Life mentorship at Pets Alive in Austin thanks to the grant received from the Petfinder Foundation.

Tim came back with a wealth of knowledge for the Dogs Playing for Life program. It will help get dogs out of their kennels and into playgroups, where they can have fun, work off excess energy, and learn social skills under the watchful eye of staff.

How many pets did this grant help?

This knowlege is going to help hundreds, if not thousands, of dogs that come through our shelter. Playgroups not only help keep dogs mentally healthy, they also help us get a much better idea of how a dog will behave in a home outside the shelter. Playgroups can even help with capacity-for-care issues, as kennel cleaning can be done efficiently while dogs are in their playgroups.

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

This grant helped Tim, our director of operations, really, truly understand the mind of the dog — which every dog that comes through our shelter will benefit from. He can’t wait to begin sharing his knowledge with the staff.