Maddie's® Insights is our ongoing webcast series with practical tips based on current research to help pets and people. 

Presenter: Erica Feuerbacher, PhD, Associate Professor, School of Animal Sciences, Virginia Tech and Director, Applied Behavior & Welfare Lab

Program Description:
Dogs are often housed alone in shelter settings to reduce injury and disease spread. However, social isolation can be a stressor for dogs. Most prior studies have focused on laboratory dogs or shelter dogs that have been kenneled for several months. Thus, those results might not necessarily generalize to shelter dogs, many of which have shorter lengths of stay than those dogs studied to date and might be cohoused soon after intake.

The presenter and her team investigated the behavioral and physiological effects of single- or pair-housing shelter dogs, most of which had recently entered the shelter, as well as the impact of pair-housing on length of stay. In this talk, Dr. Feuerbacher will review the literature on co-housing dogs, go into detail on her study methods and results, and discuss the benefits and practical considerations of pair-housing dogs.

Attendees will learn to:
1.     Identify behavioral and physiological benefits of pair housing
2.     Identify adoption benefits of pair housing
3.     Understand the requirements to consider using pair housing safely

Earn continuing education credit from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement towards 1.0 CAWA CEs. This webinar has also been pre-approved for 1.0 continuing education credits by the National Animal Care & Control Association (NACA). It has also been approved for 1 hour of continuing education credit between 12/6/24 - 12/6/26 in jurisdictions which recognize RACE approval. Complete the quiz to earn continuing education credit.

Visit Maddie's Pet Forum to comment, follow a discussion or ask questions: https://maddies.fund/MIwebcast...

keywords  Maddie's Insights, Erica N. Feuerbacher, pair-housing shelter dogs, co-housing shelter dogs, adoption benefits of pair housing

This course is part of Maddie's Monthly Behavior Connection, monthly webcasts about pet behavior - supporting pets in our community and animal shelters.

Do you adjust your training and modification plans to account for location and environmental variation? If you're interested in behavior modification plans, this free webcast is for you! Attendees will benefit from Tom Candy's extensive experience in the UK Shelter Network and learn how to evaluate challenges in difficult training environments. Tom also shows us how to create successful, adjustable behavior modification plans to maximize progress and achieve measurable success.

- Understand what is meant by Behaviour Modification Plans, and how they can be used to create H.A.P.P.I.E.R. dogs.
- Learn how to evaluate the dog’s environment for challenging factors and understand their potential impact.
- Be able to identify and apply the “Three Rs”: Risk, Reduce, Resolve.
- Deep dive into the S.M.A.R.T. system to set goals and measure progress.
- Understand the role of the emotional state

Tom Candy is a certified clinical animal behaviorist with the Animal Behaviour and Training Council in the United Kingdom, a certified canine behavior consultant (CCBC) and certified shelter behavior specialist (CSBS) with the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultant and a member of faculty and CBATI-KA with the Grisha Stewart Academy. Tom also runs Simplifying Shelter Behaviour, a Facebook page and podcast dedicated to bringing up to date, positive based training and behavior tips and tricks to shelter and rescue staff and volunteers.

Presenter: Tom Candy, CCAB, CCBC, CSBS, CBATI-KA, Senior Training and Behavior Advisor, Animal Behaviour and Training Council (UK)

This webinar has been pre-approved for 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and by the National Animal Care & Control Association.

Visit Maddie's Pet Forum to comment, access the resources, follow a discussion or ask questions: http://maddies.fund/BehaviorConnectionDecember2024

Living better fuels working better, and working better enriches how you live. This course invites you to reflect on your lived experiences, beliefs and responses to challenges—guiding you to build emotional and physical awareness. By exploring these areas, you'll uncover new clarity, motivation and purpose that can transform how you connect with others and contribute at work. Whether you're a team member or a leader, this course is designed to help you approach your role with intention and authenticity.

This course is appropriate for both seasoned leaders and those aspiring to leadership positions. By completing this course you will be able to:

• Deepen your connection with yourself by creating flexible mindsets and practices that enhance self-awareness, cultivate community and align with your personal vision
• Shape organizational culture by recognizing how your lived experiences influence your interactions, communication style, decision-making and overall leadership approach

This course is approved for 6.0 hours of continuing education from the National Animal Care & Control Association. Also earn continuing education credit from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement towards CAWA CEs.

Maddie's® Insights are monthly webcasts with practical tips based on current research to help pets and people.  

Program Description:

Housing insecurity for tenants has increased in severity in the last several years as rents have skyrocketed and eviction rates have, in many cities, climbed higher than even pre-pandemic levels, according to a 2024 Harvard study. Today, more renters than ever are experiencing at least moderate rent burden as unaffordability in the rental market hit an all-time high in 2022.  Housing insecurity directly impacts peoples’ ability to acquire and keep pets for life. There is a small, but growing body of research to better understand the impact of rental housing conditions on pets, pet owners, and animal shelters in the U.S. and how this issue relates to broader affordable housing and tenants’ rights social justice advocacy.

This presentation will share the results of three research projects, co-authored by our guest speaker Dr. Lauren Loney, a licensed attorney, researcher, and advocate crafting policies and lobbying on a variety of issues at local, state, and federal levels. Her talk will address the impact of restrictive pet policies in rental housing on pets, animal shelters, and the tenants who love them. Join us to learn about trends in pet relinquishment due to housing issues and several programmatic tools that may be most useful to mitigate the flow of these pets into animal shelters.

Key takeaways:

·      Understand how animal welfare and pet policy issues intersect with traditional affordable housing and tenants’ rights issues, particularly for low-income families.

·      Understand the difference between “pet-friendly” and “pet-inclusive” housing and why our affordable housing crisis, in general, means that policy advocacy for pet-inclusive housing include pushing back against the use of nonrefundable pet fees and rents.

Presenter: Lauren Loney, Attorney and Independent Researcher

Earn continuing education credit from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement towards 1.0 CAWA CEs. This webinar has also been pre-approved for 1.0 continuing education credits by the National Animal Care & Control Association (NACA). It has also been approved for 1 hour of continuing education credit between 10/30/24 - 10/30/26 in jurisdictions which recognize RACE approval. Complete the quiz to earn continuing education credit.

Visit Maddie's Pet Forum to comment, follow a discussion or ask questions: https://maddies.fund/MIwebcast...

keywords  Maddie's Insights, housing insecurity, Lauren Loney, pet relinquishment due to housing issues

This course is part of Maddie's Monthly Behavior Connection, monthly webcasts about pet behavior - supporting pets in our community and animal shelters.

Conducting dog meets for adopters and their resident dogs can feel stressful and full of pressure. What if it doesn't go well? How can I tell if they actually like each other? What do they do when they get home?

All of these questions and more are answered during this session! From quick body language cues, to tips and tricks for integration, to having tough conversations – maybe the dog they chose isn't a good fit! – Sam guides you through the do's and don'ts to help you get more comfortable and have more success in dog to dog matchmaking.

Presenter: Samantha Wolfman of the Animal Welfare League of Arlington and Wolfman Dog Training and Consulting

This webinar has been pre-approved for 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and by the National Animal Care & Control Association.

Visit Maddie's Pet Forum to comment, follow a discussion or ask questions:https://maddies.fund/BehaviorC...

You can have the best shelter behavior program imaginable, but if that program isn’t supported by other programs to get dogs into homes, you’re probably not going to be successful. Matching people with a new dog friend that is a good fit for them is an important part of sheltering.  

This collection includes content about finding homes and adoption counseling for dogs with behavior concerns.

Maddie's® Insights are monthly webcasts with practical tips based on current research to help pets and people.  

Program Description:

Safeguarding the well-being of cats is essential to the mission of any responsible animal shelter. Environmental enrichment and behavior modification are often key to this goal. Measuring response to these interventions is essential to ensure strategies are successful. This webinar will present four ordinal rating scales designed to evaluate different expressions of cat behavior/welfare on a 0–5 scale (modified Fear, Anxiety, and Stress score; Response to Petting score; Participation in Play score; and Food Intake Summary score) that have excellent inter-observer agreement and reliability, and a few other tools to describe behavior in a quantitative way. These tools are exceptionally useful to evaluate the response individual cats have to specific interventions, make decisions about which interventions should be tried first by looking at what was effective in cases presenting similarly in the past, and evaluating the efficacy of different interventions across a population of similar cats in a research project.

What you'll come away with:
- An understanding of the value of using standardized rating tools to evaluate behavior and welfare in shelters
- The ability to identify a range of practical applications for these tools, in both in the shelter and beyond

Presenter: Jacklyn Ellis, PhD, Director of Behavior, Toronto Humane Society

This webinar has been pre-approved for 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and by the National Animal Care & Control Association. It has also been approved for 1 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions which recognize RACE approval between 9/26/24 - 9/25/26. Complete the quiz to earn continuing education credit.

Visit Maddie's Pet Forum to comment, follow a discussion or ask questions: https://maddies.fund/MIwebcast...

keywords  Maddie's Insights, Jacklyn Ellis, PhD, behavioral data for cats, feline behavior

Let’s talk cats! While unwanted cat behavior is less common than in dogs, you wouldn’t know that by the number of requests for cat behavior content. There are a lot of cat people here on Maddie’s® University.

This collection includes our favorite feline content about body language, stress, enrichment, behavior modification, behavior concerns and adoption counseling.

This webcast was part of the Camp Maddie: Pet-Inclusive Housing Edition virtual seminar. 

Animal shelters and rescues are often on the receiving end of pet surrenders due to complex rental housing issues that are difficult to address in the moment. Recognizing the need for sustainable solutions, Michelson Found Animals’ Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative (PIHI) has developed resources to help animal welfare organizations more effectively engage rental housing providers with pet-inclusive approaches to help build happier, healthier communities. Through this session, the PIHI team provides a path for having more effective conversations with rental housing providers while empowering pet owners with the information they need to access pet-inclusive rental housing.

Presenters: Ross Barker and Sara Maria Muriello, Michelson Found Animals' Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative

This webinar has been pre-approved for 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and by the National Animal Care & Control Association. 

To find out more about this webinar, visit https://forum.maddiesfund.org/...

This webcast was part of the Camp Maddie: Pet-Inclusive Housing Edition virtual seminar. 

Housing Equity & Advocacy Resource Team (HEART LA) is dedicated to ensuring that legal protections for tenants with pets are not just theoretical but actively applied in the real world to prevent housing insecurity. Many tenants, especially those with emotional support animals (ESAs), face legal barriers and discrimination from landlords despite existing protections. Their mission is to bridge this gap by using legal interventions to secure housing rights and provide tenants with the security they deserve. They believe that no one should be forced to choose between their home and their pet, and our work focuses on translating legal rights into real-world protections that keep people and their animals together.

In this presentation, the HEART LA team provides a brief overview of the legal protections for tenants with pets and the eviction process. They also discuss data-driven practices and how they inform all areas of our programming from legal services to policy & advocacy, and community engagement.

Presenters from HEART LA: Dianne Prado, Founder and President; Diana Cruz, Program Director; Zaira Bernal, Paralegal 

This webinar has been pre-approved for 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and by the National Animal Care & Control Association. 

To find out more about this webinar, visit https://forum.maddiesfund.org/...