Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter: Play Group Training Grant Report

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

The money was used for a staff member to attend the Dogs Playing for Life seminar at Austin Pets Alive.

The experience at DPFL provided the motivation and education to standardize and grow our playgroup operations and make playgroups more frequent. Playgroups are also giving us significantly more information about the dogs in our care and how they may get along with others.

How many pets did this grant help?

We currently have 61 dogs who are currently in our playgroup program in one form or another, and an additional 59 dogs have “graduated” from our playgroup program through adoption, foster, or transport.

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

Jasper (first photo) came to the shelter suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He would not let anyone touch him. Slowly we got him to eat and hid pain medications in his food. Then he began to feel better and trust us. We were able to perform surgery to remove the bullets and clean the wounds. Through all this, he still did not trust us. However, we found that playgroups helped ease his feelings of “stranger danger.” In the large yard with other dogs, he didn’t have to worry about the humans — none of the other dogs did. He learned to coexist with us. Jarvis is still at the shelter looking for the right home. (Jasper’s Petfinder profile has not been posted yet.)