Alberta & Alexis: A Behavior Team Highlight
Our Behavior and Training team does their best to support the dogs at the shelter. They go above and beyond to ensure these dogs have someone on their side, someone to be the voice they don’t have and support them on their journey to adoption. A few things our behavior and training team do that you may be familiar with is running our daily playgroups. Ensuring all dogs that like to play with other dogs get some time out of their kennels, socializing and learning from their fellow doggy peers. They also will regularly work with the dogs that prefer to be a one-and-only, making sure they also get breaks from their kennel and get the attention they deserve.
Our behavior team assesses 100% of the dogs that come through the shelter before they are available to determine their play style, if they have any insecurities they need to work on and what sort of training our volunteers will need to handle them during our walk team. These are just the basics our team does daily, but they are always coming up with new and creative ways to help these dogs get the support they need to find an adopter.
This dedication was seen when working with Alberta. Alberta is deaf and had trouble connecting with her people before we discovered this. She often got frustrated with her handlers because she couldn’t understand them, and we couldn’t understand her. Shortly after we discovered she was deaf, Alexis Newman, a Behavior and Training team member, started learning doggy sign language and teaching it to Alberta. With this, we quickly learned how smart she was, and she loved this new way of communicating with her humans. She picked up on commands fast and had a blast training with Alexis. Once handlers knew the signs she had learned, walking with her and making those connections was so much easier for both Alberta and her handler. Alberta has now been adopted into a family with another deaf dog and they are loving her! Learning this new form of communication has helped them bond further with Alberta and the dog they had already.
We believe in tailoring training plans to what each individual animal needs. Training isn’t a “one size fits all” kind of thing- and that’s okay! We’re proud to have an amazing team that rallies behind each dog to determine what works best.