Prairie Paws Animal Shelter: Play Yard Renovation Grant Report

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

Our Petfinder Foundation grant funds were spent to purchase supplies and labor to build a shelter for shade in our dog run and construct and move catch pens in order to have bigger and better dog playgroups. While we are in a holding pattern because of labor schedules and weather, we did get the catch pens constructed and we do have the supplies and are ready to finish construction on the shade structure.

In November, we began implementing the Dogs Playing for Life program principles at Prairie Paws thanks to the Petfinder Foundation grant to send Tim, our director of operations, to Austin Pets Alive! for a Dogs Playing for Life mentorship. Dogs Playing for Life is a program developed by Aimee Sadler (a nationally recognized dog trainer) to help reduce cage stress for dogs. The program gets the dogs out of their kennels and into playgroups. They get to have fun, work off excess energy and learn social skills under the watchful eye of the facilitators. It helps keep them mentally healthy and it helps us learn how they may behave outside the shelter.

After the initial playgroup implementation, it became clear that, in order to have a great playgroup session in the ever-changing Kansas weather, we needed to construct a shelter in the dog run for shade and construct better catch pens. This grant helped us do that. And it will continue to help hundreds of dogs each year become enriched during their time at Prairie Paws while awaiting their forever homes.

How many pets did this grant help?

200

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

One of the dogs the playgroups in our dog runs have helped is Waylon. He came to us not a huge fan of other dogs, but after spending time in the dog playgroups, he has realized that socializing isn’t all that bad. Meet him: www.petfinder.com/petdetail/41648789
Playgroup video: https://youtu.be/CH5L3J53Re8