| 8:00 AM-8:50 AM |
Animal Emotions, Fear Free® Concepts, and Humane Handling to Maximize Health and Welfare
In this first session of the bootcamp, we will discuss animal emotions and their impacts on behavior and health. We will be reviewing the Fear Free® Shelters and Clinics program as a basis of assessing and improving what you’re doing to minimize fear, anxiety, and stress in animals and improve health and welfare. We will also discuss the importance of team training and ensuring that your practices are in alignment with your stated goals and policies.
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| 9:00 AM-9:50 AM |
Humane Housing and Enrichment in Shelters and Clinics
Our second session in this bootcamp will focus on the impacts and importance of the physical environment for animals, including housing, facilities, training, and enrichment and how these things interact with animals’ senses to either exacerbate or alleviate fear, anxiety, and stress. These components of an animal’s care will have significant impacts on the animal’s overall health and welfare, as well as their ability to fight disease or recover from injury or illness (in a shelter or veterinary clinic setting).
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| 10:20 AM-11:10 AM |
Proper Population Management to Improve Behavior, Training, and Enrichment Program Results
How many animals are housed in a facility and how long they each stay will have tremendous impacts on both their emotional state and behavior as well as how robust and effective a behavior, training, and enrichment program you will be able to sustain. We will discuss concepts of the “right place”—assessing which animals should come to your shelter and which can be served without being impounded. We will also discuss what your “capacity for care” is and how the welfare of the animals you are trying to help is impacted when you go over your capacity. Along the way, we will be exploring ways to manage your shelter population and minimize length of stay in your facility.
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| 11:20 AM-12:10 PM |
Animal Assessment and Ethical, Appropriate Decision-Making
In session four of this two-day bootcamp, we will discuss current best practices in assessing animals in shelters to determine the most appropriate (and ethical) outcomes for them. Daily population management rounds are a big part of this process, and we’ll cover what rounds are, how to do them, and how to effectively follow-up on them. We will also dive into decision-making concepts and tools and explore making difficult decisions, including behavioral euthanasia decision-making.
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