SpokAninmal: Dogs Playing for Life Mentorship Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
We are so excited to add the Dogs Playing For Life program to our shelter operations. Prior to the award, we knew implementing the program would be a multi-step process. The mentorship was the first step. Next, we knew our trainer would need to come home and recruit volunteers to help implement and run the program.
To our surprise, and while our trainer was in Florida with DPFL, we had numerous volunteers join our organization who had already been trained on DPFL and have multiple years of experience running playgroups! That's allowing us to officially launch the program on May 1!
For our dogs, it means they will all get outside playtime every day. The monitoring done in the play yard will give us new insights into the dogs so we can provide adopters with better information, and we plan to create a viewing area near the yard so people can see what the dog is like outside of the kennel. We are SUPER excited for our dogs, our staff, and our volunteers. Thank you!
How many pets did this grant help?
400
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
This grant is helping pets like Waylon. Because he’s timid with strangers, his kennel presence doesn’t put his best paw forward.
By seeing Waylon participating in DPFL playgroups, potential adopters can see a different side of him — a side we see that’s playful, silly, and energetic.
Since Waylon has shown fearful defensive behavior toward young children, we’re currently recommending his future home be with adults and older teens. That might mean his length of stay could be a bit longer than our average, so on this front, DPFL will help keep him engaged, allow our trainers to give him personalized attention, and ensure he’s happy during his stay.
