One of the local veterinarians mentioned that they don’t have many other choices. Running large shelters with adoption programs costs too much money. They also live in a region that generally doesn’t look at dogs as “pets.” Much like the feral cats roaming our own neighborhoods, these dogs are not considered companions, but rather have become more like feared pests. This makes adoption programs difficult to execute.

Unfortunately, Baghdad isn’t alone. Many countries struggle with adoption programs for their increasingly large numbers of stray dogs.

DogsTrust, the largest dog welfare charity in the UK has many programs that operate internationally. One of their more recent campaigns involves feral dogs living in countries like Iraq. Without killing stray dogs, they have found that TNR programs are successful in reducing the numbers of strays.

The TNR program is run much in the same manner as it is here in the US for cats. The dogs are trapped, spayed or neutered, then returned back to their previous territories. Dogs that have been trapped are marked with an “ear tipping” (notch cut into an ear) to prevent re-trapping of already altered dogs. Since these dogs are returned to their territories, it prevents more dogs from taking up residence.

In efforts to prove that these programs work, DogsTrust helped start a TNR program in Oradea, Russia. The program has been dubbed SOS Dogs Oradea and is a joint project of a number of different animal welfare organizations. Along with their TNR program, SOS Dogs Oradea also has an educational program for schools that teach children about dogs and their welfare. Since the introduction of the program, the number of strays and dog bite incidents have lowered and the strays are less and less viewed as pests.

This leads us to ask: Can TNR programs help strays all around the world?

• No Kill Conference
• Curiosity Caught The Kitten
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At this website you’ll find a wealth of information from a variety of no-kill supporters. The blog dissects the issues and concerns surrounding no-kill sheltering, pit bulls, and feral cats and provides many tips and tricks to get your local shelter animals adopted. You can comment on the posts or even contribute posts of your own. Enjoy!

• New Bill for sterilization
• No Kill Conference
• Curiosity Caught The Kitten

We took Tony for a walk in the snow. It was his first experience in it, so he was a bit wary.

We take him out in a little harness specially made for cats. It constricts at the back to prevent the cat from slipping out of it.

These walks give Tony the mental stimulation he would get as an “outside” cat without all the possible dangers that come with it.

Others take interest as well…

1.5 inches of snow is no match for this cat.

• Insecure Pumpkin
• Curiosity Caught The Kitten
• Volunteer

Clare Palmer, “Killing Animals in Animal Shelters”
in The Animal Studies Group, Killing Animals

• Curiosity Caught The Kitten
• No Kill Revolution
• TNR for Dogs

Why do shelters use temperament tests?
Shelter staff use temperament tests to find out if an animal has a behavioral problem which may affect his adoption. After the test is done the staff will be better able to place the animal into an appropriate home, thereby decreasing the amount of animals returned to the shelter after adoption. If the animal is found to have a behavior issue, shelter staff will work with the animal prior to being placed in a home as well as inform the adopter about the behavior. If the behavior is too serious and the prognosis is poor, the shelter may opt to have the animal killed in order to prevent any future bites and liability issues.

Who uses these tests?
Most shelters use some form of temperament testing to evaluate the adoptability of their animals. These tests are used widely by both “kill” and no-kill shelters alike. Leaders in the movement of behavioral assessments include Emily Weiss, PhD, the creator of the “SAFER Test” and Sue Sternberg, the creator of “Assess-a-Pet.”

What kind of tests are used?
There are many temperament tests used today, however, most shelters use either the “SAFER Test,” the “Assess-a-Pet,” or some derivative of these two.

Ideally, each test is performed by shelter staff who have trained specifically to perform the test. The dog will be given a period of adjustment ranging from 3 to 5 days so that he is familiar with shelter life prior to the first test. To begin, the dog will be leashed and scanned for behavioral cues which may be a safety hazard, such as nervousness, shyness, or reactivity. If the dog is too edgy, he may be given a longer period of adjustment.

The actual testing phase has many steps, though the whole process will only take some 15 minutes. The initial steps may test the dog’s reactions to gentle handling. These include repeatedly examining the dogs teeth by lifting up his lips, hugging the dog by a gentle head lock, and gently pinching and pulling at the dog. Further phases test the dog’s reactions to children via a life-size doll and taking the dog’s bowl and treats away with a rubber hand. During such action staff assess play style, level of arousal, and ability to calm down once play has ceased followed by meeting a strange person, dog, or another animal.

Some tests will include a visit with a veterinarian to rule out any medical cause for a particular reaction. The tests may be repeated to re-evaluate the dog after behavior modification efforts or experience in a foster home.

What do the results mean?
Although it varies, most tests are designed to include wide range of possible results. Results may be graded on a scale of A-B-C-D-F, where F is considered failure. The dog is also ranked on a variety of reactions such as: allows hugging; allows but with struggle; allows but becomes tense; intense struggle; tries to bite. Results are then grouped into categories like: no restrictions; home without kids; home without other dogs; unsocial; borderline; failed; no-issue. Dogs who exhibited the most serious issues are typically candidates for euthanasia.

Do these tests work?
That depends on whom you ask. There are very few studies of “behavioral testing” and their results vary considerably. Some researchers have found behavioral differences between breeds, sexes, ages, and whether or not the animal was intact, while others have found just one or none of these differences.

The variety in results may be due to a number of variables. One problem facing researchers is that dogs’ behaviors are largely contextual, yielding different behavioral cues depending on outside influences. Dogs in shelters may have heightened stress levels due to long periods of confinement. Such stress often only worsens in time.

The results may also depend on the perspective of the people involved, be they the evaluators themselves or their adoptive parents. Behaviors considered unacceptable to one person may not be considered unacceptable to the next. The number of dogs who pass or fail these tests can differ depending on whether or not the shelter is “kill” or no-kill and their level of dedication to the cause. Some argue that shelters who are bogged-down with too many dogs and too little space may be inclined to mark more dogs as un-adoptable than those experiencing fewer of these stresses.

Some researchers however, have found that behavioral tests can significantly reduce the number of dogs returned for aggressiveness. A recent research paper, “Behavioral evaluation and demographic information in the assessment of aggressiveness in shelter dogs” by Kelley S. Bollen and Joseph Horowitz, reviewed the effectiveness of the “Assess-a-Pet” test in a shelter environment. During the study, 2017 shelter dogs were tested for aggressive tendencies. The subjects were placed into categories of “failed; unsocial; borderline; no-issue.” After placement in adoptive homes, dogs were evaluated in a 6-month follow-up via a phone interview with the adoptive parent. By implementing the behavioral tests, returns of adoptions fell from 19% the previous year to 14% and returns for aggression fell from 5% to 3.5%. Although these reductions are statistically significant, they are relatively small.

Are these tests fair?
The research mentioned may indicate a reduced return rate, but it did not (and possibly could not) fully evaluate those dogs who failed the test for aggressiveness. 796 dogs failed the evaluation and 759 of these were killed; 112 of those killed showed severe aggression on only one component of the test. It is also worthwhile to note that six dogs were killed who exhibited aggressive behaviors in their previous home, but had passed the evaluation.

“In order to be fair, a temperament test must do two things: (1) screen out aggression and (2) ensure that friendly, scared, shy, sick, or injured dogs do not get wrongly executed. By focusing on the first prong, traditional shelters have ignored the second, a violation that goes to the core of the no-kill ideal: Animals are to be judged and treated as individuals.” Nathan Winograd of The No Kill Advocacy Center.

It is clear that some of the dogs evaluated indeed exhibited aggression in their home, despite having passed the test. While such false-positives do not directly describe the tests’ propensities for false-negatives, we may suppose that dogs who failed the test may not actually have been aggressive. How many of these dogs were wrongfully killed? Do we find it acceptable to wrongfully kill a single dog? Do we find it moral or merciful to kill an animal from decisions solely contingent on a human-perceived behavior? Perhaps these are questions behavioral tests may never fully answer.

Visit The Bark Unleashed for an in-depth study of this topic.

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Although some shelters go to great lengths to get their animals ready for adoption, most do not have the space or time to provide behaviorally-challenged animals the extensive care they need. For animals with large behavior problems, arriving at a shelter may be an automatic death sentence.

This is especially true for those animals who are too aggressive to be properly cared for. Not only are they unfit for adoption, but they are also a liability to the shelter itself. Even no-kill shelters may kill a dog who is too aggressive to be handled and adopted.

Feral cats pose a considerable dilemma. Although they may be too aggressive to be placed into an adoptive home, they are also capable of living ‘wild’ in their own environment without posing a significant human risk. Instead of killing these cats, organizations such as Alley Cat Allies are dedicated to saving these animals’ lives.

Organizations save these cats by using a TNR program. TNR means ‘trap, neuter, return’ and the programs do exactly that. Volunteers catch feral cats via humane traps; then they transport the cats to facilities where they are spayed or neutered. After the surgery is complete, the cats are replaced back into their original territory to prevent recolonization by more, unaltered cats. Feral cat colonies may be taken care of by volunteers called ‘caregivers.’ Caregivers provide the colony with food and water, shelter, ongoing health care, as well as neighborly advice to the surrounding humans.

Recently, we became aware of a feral cat living under a shed in a neighbor’s backyard. She was caring for two eight week-old kittens. They were becoming more bold, leaving the shed for longer periods of time. We quickly set-out to capture the kittens and mother in order to spay and neuter. We planned to re-home the kittens while releasing the mother back into the same territory.

We were able lure one kitten, whom we call Tony, with a dangling toy. But the neighbors soon discovered the two other residents under their shed and blocked its entrance. The mother and second kitten have been roaming the streets since, making it virtually impossible for us to capture either.

Tony has been nursed back to health and grown dramatically. The Jaeger Fund is currently fostering Tony and preparing him for adoption. To learn more about his little kitten life, visit Tony’s Twitter feed.

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Winograd took the audience down the path of shelter history, informing us about how the shelter systems started out as a safe-haven for saving lives and slowly spiraled into the shelters we know today.

The current trend in animal sheltering is saving the animals we can and euthanizing the rest. Winograd rejects this idea, saying that if we were really trying our best to save lives in the first place, there wouldn’t be such a large surplus in the end. He says that in order for No-Kill shelters to work there are a number of programs that must be up and running.

• Foster care: foster parents help ease shelter crowding by taking in animals not yet ready for adoption. They provide care, housing, and training necessary to make these animals loving pets and help place them in new homes.
• TNR “Trap, Neuter/Spay, Release” program: caretakers trap feral cats living in a neighborhood, spay or neuter them, then release back into their territories. Since the cats can no longer reproduce, the population eventually declines, thereby keeping unwanted cats off the streets and out of shelters.
• Low-cost Spay/Neuter: allows low-income families to get their pets altered with little to no cost.
• Volunteers: increases the number of hands useful for cleaning, training, walking, bathing and fund-raising.
• Compassionate Director: A director that is not compassionate about saving lives simply won’t be saving enough of them.
• Adoption programs: heightens the adoption rate by keeping shelters open when people are off work, take animals off-site to get public attention, and increase public awareness by utilizing televised news stations, newspaper ads and websites. Keep animals in their new homes by making sure they are a good match for their adopters.
• Rescue Groups: takes the burden off of shelters by bringing animals into their own adoption programs.
• Retention: keeps animals in their current homes by providing medical assistance, behavioral advice, and keeps lost animals for longer periods before putting them into adoption programs.
• Rehabilitation: provides animals with medical problems proper veterinary treatment. Uses behavior modification and training to save the lives of difficult pets.
• Community Involvement: increases the amount of supporters for donations, adoptions, and other help.

Is your local shelter doing all it can to fulfill the no-kill equation?

To attend a No Kill Conference near you visit the No Kill Advocacy Center. For more information about Nathan Winograd and future talks, visit Nathan’s website.

Nathan Winograd

• Curiosity Caught The Kitten
• New Bill for sterilization
• No Kill Revolution

The Gentle Leader® is a guiding and calming aid used by TTouch®.

As more evidence is found of family-like groupings rather than strict hierarchies among dogs (see our post about dominance theory: Beating the Alpha), top trainers are moving towards methods of guidance rather than force. Perhaps the most gentle of these methods are used by so called “TTouch® practitioners.”

Originally used to train horses, the main principle behind TTouch® is calming the animal’s nerves thus allowing the animal to think and react clearly and peacefully. Its main technique is massaging movements made up of small circles along imaginary lines on all sides of the animal’s body. The circles give the animal a strong sense of body awareness and build the relationship between owner and pet.

To train a dog to respond to commands, TTouch® relies on various food rewards, lures, guides, and calming aids. With these at hand, the handler maneuvers her dog through a sort of obstacle course made up of different surfaces to walk on, poles to hop over and boards to cross. Not only does this give the dog ample socialization, but he also learns to trust his owner’s judgment while improving self-confidence.

Linda Tellington Jones, the creator of TTouch®, stresses that handlers shouldn’t expect too much from their dogs. She writes that handlers must give their dogs the opportunity to sniff, bark, chew, dig and do their doggy things by providing them with appropriate outlets within the home.

Keep watching The Jaeger Fund for more advice as we use these techniques on Jaeger and Tony.

TTouch is a registered trademark of Linda Tellington-Jones. Gentle Leader is a registered trademark of Premier.

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• Insecure Pumpkin
• The Other End of the Leash

This nine year old female was adopted through the Central Ohio Greyhound Rescue.

With over 4,000 years of history behind him, the Greyhound is one of the most ancient breeds of dog still seen today. His long lineage can be traced back to ancient Egypt where his athleticism and kind personality made him both companion and hunter. Throughout time he was favored by noblemen and royalty and has since found himself in almost every country on the globe.

In America the Greyhound has become a sports icon for gamblers, producing thousands of dogs each year for racing. Although racing has been on the decline, there are still forty-six tracks operating within 15 states, each of which is constantly displacing dogs through retirement.

A female ex-racer available through Team Greyhound.

The Central Ohio Greyhound Rescue is one of many organizations throughout the US that are saving these dogs’ lives. Their organization is made up entirely of volunteers who foster dogs in their own homes. Most of COGR’s rescues come from tracks in Florida, where gambling is still in high demand, while others may come from tracks in West Virginia or have been surrendered as pets.

The female pictured above shows off her registration number through the National Greyhound Association.

Track dogs are born on a “farm” where the owner distinguishes which pups will make the better racer. Dogs that make the final cut are sent off to a trainer where they build muscle and speed. Most dogs will be retired between the ages of 2 to 5, with the fastest dogs being kept the longest.

Although bred for speed, the racing hound spends most of his day inside a crate and is let out at regular intervals to stretch his legs. Therefore, they come into rescue already crate trained, which makes house training rather easy. This also means that ex-racers are quite docile and easy-going. In fact, they are known throughout COGR as “couch potatoes” and spend most of the day sprawled out for a puppy nap.

This handsome male was adopted through the Central Ohio Greyhound Rescue.

It’s hard to believe that a dog that has spent its life chasing mechanical rabbits would make a good companion for a housecat or Yorkie, but many ex-racers do. COGR tests all of their rescues with cats before going into a new home. They report that some 70% of ex-racers aren’t interested in chasing cats within the home. However, like most hounds, ex-racers may chase something that they see dash across the yard. The only difference is that, with these hounds, they’ll catch it! So keep the kitties inside and your fence secure.

As you can tell by our photos, greyhounds come in all sizes and colors, giving quite the variety to choose from. We’ll warn you though - they have velvet-soft fur, sparkling eyes and charming personalities that will win the hearts of every dog lover. Luckily Greyhounds seem to love other Greyhounds, so you’ll know it’ll be a good match when you come back for your second ex-racer!

To rescue a Greyhound near you please visit:

• Central Ohio Grehound Rescue
• Team Greyhound Adoption of Ohio, Inc.

• The first foster
• Insecure Pumpkin
• Get the word out!

In a lot of ways, Tom Regan’s book Empty Cages is an animal rights activist’s “membership guide” for new activists, aiding the unknowing in constructing arguments and reasons for protecting the rights of the sentient beings around us. For long-time ARAs, however, there may be little to gain.

Regan begins by identifying the qualities of ARAs, and thankfully does not overgeneralize but  describes the whole range of approaches and beliefs. In order to aid self-identification, perhaps for new activists, he explains three reasons a person becomes an activist for animals:

• A DaVincian has a natural empathy towards animals from early childhood
• A Damascan has a sudden revelation of animal suffering at some point in his or her life, before which animal rights was not important, after which animal rights are critical
• A Muddler learns and experiences smaller revelations over a longer period of time, eventually reaching the same conclusions about animal rights and their primacy that DaVincians always knew and Damascans realize in an instant

While of little use to seasoned animal rights activists, these three archetypes may help a wavering potential-activist reach a conclusion (”I’m a Damascan!“) and join the discussions to follow.

The majority of the book follows, and includes a (novel?) argument for the necessity of rights for animals and a wide-ranging but cursory examination of current issues relevant to ARAs. We’ll quickly look at Regan’s argument for the necessity of animal rights below.

In a pragmatic reduction of the metaphysical differences between humans and other animals, Regan explains that animals with brains, nervous systems, and the like have self-interest, that is, strive to avoid suffering, “whether anyone cares about this or not.” That is to say, in an Ockham’s razor-wielding fashion, many animals are aware of the world, have an interest in what happens to their own self in this world, whether anyone cares about this or not. “We” are all “subjects-of-a-life” (in a “Sartre-ing” coinage), morally equal and the same, with no species higher or lower than another.

This is why, in his formulation, humans and most animals have rights, but not, say, sticks and stones, or plants.

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of his pragmatism and oversimplification, he omits the same respect towards insects and spiders, reptiles, amphibians, and even fish. Really, only mammals and birds apply, at least in Empty Cages. Regan is apologetic about such a limitation, but finds it necessary in order to keep his arguments easy to digest, perhaps for fledgling activists.

In all, Empty Cages is a laudable tidying-up and packaging of the hairy issues surrounding and penetrating animal rights activism. It is recommended for newcomers and the unsure, but the “real issues” facing animals today and the real psychological barriers present in our society need a stronger social critique, inclusion of the “edge cases”, and a guiding philosophy with, frankly, a little more meat.

• Are you an Advocate?
• Killing Animals
• Get the word out!