With shelter dog populations returning to pre-pandemic levels, outcomes slowing, transport destinations drying up, and historic levels of staffing turnover, shelters are struggling with medium and large dogs. Everybody is asking, “What do we do?”
The Big Dog Master Class is now available on-demand at Maddie’s® University to help staff at all levels better manage big dog populations, maximize organizational efficiencies, utilize technologies, build proven programs, and implement transparent, effective policies based on five components of big dog management: public safety, intake management, live outcomes, humane care, and cost-efficiency.
We brought the nation’s top experts together – among them veterinarians, epidemiologists, veterinary behaviorists, shelter directors, trainers, and national leaders – to give you highly usable programs that don’t require special skills or breaking the bank to make positive changes.
This free, on-demand, virtual conference opportunity is made possible by support from Maddie’s Fund® and organized by the Maddie’s® Million Pet Challenge and Human Animal Support Services.
Purpose
Times are tough for medium and large shelter dogs and we’re here to help, providing proven, data-driven protocols and practices to address your biggest challenges. In this two-day virtual conference, we’ll offer straightforward, streamlined modules for all levels of animal shelter professionals to move organizations towards better dog management, more live outcomes, shorter lengths of stay, and safer shelters.
Who Is This Content For?
The content in this on-demand version of the Big Dog Master Class conference is designed for animal welfare professionals, veterinarians, volunteers, and anyone else who works with shelter dogs in some capacity and wants to learn. All presentations are geared towards all levels of animal shelter staff. Because they are data-driven and research-based, they’ll be interesting for seasoned professionals while also being accessible for people with limited experience and those just entering the animal welfare field.
Continuing Education Credit
This conference has been approved for 8 hours of Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credit by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and National Animal Care & Control Association.
Each hour-long block in this conference has been approved for 1 hour of continuing education credit until February 14, 2024 in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval.
Learn More About the Maddie's Million Pet Challenge
Out of the successful lessons of the Million Cat Challenge and the hard lessons of the pandemic, and thanks to Maddie’s Fund’s support, the Maddie’s Million Pet Challenge (MMPC) has brought together four teams dedicated to helping communities build programs to keep families and their pets together, improve outcomes for all shelter pets, and assure that pets who already have families will receive the care they need. MMPC is a collaboration of UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at UF, Open Door Veterinary Collective, and Team Shelter USA.
Learn More About Human Animal Support Services
The Human Animal Support Services project is an international, collaborative effort of more than 2,100 animal shelters and 11,000 animal welfare professionals who are working together to keep pets with their families and reimagine animal services to better support their communities.
A review of research into reasons owners surrender dogs, with the surprising finding that behavior concerns were not a primary risk factor for owner surrender.
A review of research into reasons owners surrender dogs, with the surprising finding that behavior concerns were not a primary risk factor for owner surrender.
Presenter: Janis Bradley, MA, Director of Communications & Publications, National Canine Research Council
· Earn 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and from the National Animal Care & Control Association.
· This course has been approved for 1.0 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval. Pass the quiz with a score of 70% or higher to access your CE certificate and then upload it to https://CEBroker.com. This is the broker that the AAVSB uses to track your continuing education credits.
Keywords: owner surrender dogs, dog behavior in shelters, canine behavior, behavioral incompatibilities and dog relinquishment to shelters, canine behavior evaluations for shelter dogs, Janice Bradley, National Canine Research Council, animal sheltering, big dogs, Big Dog Master Class, animal behavior, big dogs, large dogs, Maximize In-Shelter Welfare, Maximize physical and behavioral health, Animal & Population Management, Strategic & Operational Planning, Policies & Procedures, webcast
Janis holds a B.A. in Philosophy and a Masters in English. She first pursued a career as a college teacher, counselor, and administrator. Leaving academia, she then took up professionally her passion for the human-canine relationship. From 2000 through 2009, Janis trained more than 400 professional pet dog trainers.
2 great short sessions - "The Data Is In – What’s Happening and What’s Coming Next" with Steve Zeidman AND "The Five Elements of Great Shelter Dog Management" with Kristen Hassen
Presenters:
Steve Zeidman, Senior Vice President, Software Solutions, Pethealth, Inc.
Dr. Julie Levy, Fran Marino Endowed Distinguished Professor of Shelter Medicine Education, Maddie's® Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida
Kristen Hassen, Founder and Principal Consultant, Outcomes Consulting
Session 1: The Data Is In – What’s Happening and What’s Coming Next (19 minutes)
Steve Zeidman and Dr. Julie Levy share the last three years of data about big dogs in shelters, including trends in intake, length of stay, live outcomes, types of outcomes, and more.
Session 2: The Five Elements of Great Shelter Dog Management (32 minutes)
Kristen Hassen presents an overview of what a comprehensive program to manage big dogs in shelters looks like. She shares recommendations for proven programs, smart policies, and goal-setting that will enable animal welfare leaders to tackle tough shelter problems, build a sustainable management system for big dogs, and get more dogs into homes faster, all while maintaining a culture of safety and community responsibility.
Learning Objectives:
Learn what the data shows about national trends in big dogs in animal shelters and how to apply this information to your own organization's programs and policies.
Be able to share information on the data points discussed, big dog management practices of the most successful organizations, and how to make small changes to your shelter's practices that have a significant, measurable impact on length of stay, live outcomes, intake reduction, and more.
Understand the components of healthy big dog management programs and be able to identify gaps and problem areas in your own organization in order to be able to make improvements.
Continuing Education:
Earn 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and from the National Animal Care & Control Association.
This course has been approved for 1.0 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval. Pass the quiz with a score of 70% or higher to access your CE certificate and then upload it to https://CEBroker.com. This is the broker that the AAVSB uses to track your continuing education credits.
Keywords: data, intake, length of stay, live outcomes, management system for big dogs, animal behavior, big dogs, large dogs, dogs, Maximize In-Shelter Welfare, Maximize physical and behavioral health, Animal & Population Management, Strategic & Operational Planning, Policies & Procedures, webcast
Few people know that I was already working in animal care when I transitioned to my first full time technology role in 2002. Before this, I was an operational manager trying to accomplish our organization's important mission with a very limited budget. To meet our objectives, we needed to work more efficiently so I turned to solutions that involved technology. Ever since, my focus has been the intersection of animal care and technology.
Julie Levy, DVM
Co-Founder, Million Cat Challenge; Maddie's Shelter Medicine Program at UF
Maddie's Shelter Medicine Program at UF
Dr. Julie Levy is the Fran Marino Endowed Distinguished Professor of Shelter Medicine Education at the University of Florida, where she focuses on the health and welfare of animals in shelters, feline infectious diseases, and humane alternatives for cat population control. She founded Operation Catnip, a community cat trap-neuter-return program that has spayed, neutered, and vaccinated more than 80,000 cats in Gainesville since 1998. A decade later, she joined Dr. Cynda Crawford to launch Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the College of Veterinary Medicine. This educational and discovery initiative has a global impact on the care of homeless animals and served as the academic home for development of the Fear Free Shelters program. She later teamed up with Dr. Kate Hurley to start the Million Cat Challenge, a shelter-based campaign that saved more than 5 million cats in shelters across North America and then Maddie’s Million Pet Challenge to create transformative “communities of practice” that deliver access to care through humane community-centric programming—inside and outside of the shelter—to achieve the right outcome for every pet.
Kristen Hassen
Founder/Principal Consultant
Outcomes Consulting
Kristen Hassen is the founder and principal consultant of Outcomes Consulting, building safe, humane communities for pets and the people who love them. She also serves on the board of the National Animal Care and Control Association (NACA). Kristen is also the co-founder and former director of the Human Animal Support Services Project. Before this, she was the director at Pima Animal Care Center, the municipal animal shelter in Tucson, Arizona, that took in approximately 20,000 pets annually with a 92% live release rate. Prior to this, Kristen served as the deputy director at Austin Animal Services and the assistant director of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Fairfax, Virginia.
2 great short sessions - "Double Your Big Dog Fosters in 30 Days" and "How to Get Big Dogs Adopted From Foster" with Kelly Duer
Presenter: Kelly Duer, Foster Care Specialist, Maddie's Fund
Session 1: Double Your Big Dog Fosters in 30 Days (27 minutes)
You’ll learn what the latest market research says about messaging and techniques that can turn potential fosters into applicants, and how short-term foster programs can help you find the fosters and adopters you need.
Session 2: How to Get Big Dogs Adopted From Foster (20 minutes)
You’ll learn the most effective strategies for getting dogs adopted from foster - including marketing them and getting them adopted without needing to return to the shelter. You’ll learn what the latest market research says about messaging and techniques to find the adopters you need, and how organizations with the most robust foster programs are empowering foster caregivers to assist in efforts to market their foster pets online.
Learning Objectives:
Learn how to create a community culture of fostering, normalizing the fostering of big dogs
Learn messaging techniques for motivating potential fosters to sign up
Understand the major reasons people decide not to foster and the strategies that are most effective in overcoming these barriers
Develop a protocol for marketing and adopting pets from foster homes
Continuing Education:
Earn 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and from the National Animal Care & Control Association.
This course has been approved for 1.0 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval. Pass the quiz with a score of 70% or higher to access your CE certificate and then upload it to https://CEBroker.com. This is the broker that the AAVSB uses to track your continuing education credits.
Keywords: foster care, dog foster, management system for big dogs, animal behavior, big dogs, large dogs, dogs, Maximize physical and behavioral health, Animal & Population Management, Strategic & Operational Planning, Policies & Procedures, Foster Care, webcast, MMP
Senior Community Solutions Initiative Specialist - Foster Care Specialist
Maddie's Fund
As Senior Community Solutions Initiative Specialist, Kelly's focus is on helping shelters and rescue organizations increase lifesaving through the implementation of robust foster care programs. Her role includes consulting with shelters, creating and providing training for organizations and their foster coordinators, writing and assisting with research on foster care.
Kelly previously coordinated a foster program that brought orphaned children to the United States in order to find them permanent adoptive homes, worked as the Foster Expansion Coordinator for a national study of foster care, and assisted with the behavioral foster study that was conducted at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter. Her work with foster care and social media has been featured in many national publications, websites and networks, including Animal Sheltering magazine, the Huffington Post, Best Friends magazine, BarkPost, iheartdogs.com, HuffPost Live and Fox News.
2 great short sessions - "Proven Strategies to Help "Long Stay" Dogs Find Homes" with Rachel Jones AND "The "Warehousing" Conundrum and How to Address It" with Kirsten Hassen
Presenters: Rachel Jones, Urgent Dog Case Manager, Pima Animal Care Center Kristen Hassen, Founder and Principal Consultant, Outcomes Consulting
Session 1: Proven Strategies to Help "Long Stay" Dogs Find Homes (19 minutes)
We begin by defining what we mean when we describe a dog as a ‘long stay’ and how shelters can track the data on these dogs in order to help them more quickly. The presenters talk about the common factors that cause a dog to get ‘stuck’ in the shelter system and how a combination of case management, targeted enrichment, thoughtful marketing, and transparent communication can help these more challenging dogs.
Session 2: The "Warehousing" Conundrum and How to Address It (39 minutes)
We will address the conundrum of ‘warehousing’ vs. euthanizing healthy and save-able dogs and how shelters can address this problem, not by choosing one of these two options, but an entirely different path altogether. These two presentations stem from work done at the Pima Animal Care Center, an open-admission shelter with an intake of roughly 15,000 dogs annually and an average length of stay in the shelter of just nine days.
Learning Objectives:
Learn how to use daily inventory reports to identify ‘long stay’ dogs and what information needs to be gathered to help move them out of the shelter system.
Learn how to identify the common internal and external factors that lead to dogs having longer-than-necessary lengths of stay and the immediate actions to take to remove these obstacles to outcomes.
Learn how to do a daily walk-through process and quarterly shelter census review process in order to ensure no dogs ‘slip through the cracks,’ and ‘long stay’ dogs receive immediate and urgent attention.
Continuing Education:
Earn 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and from the National Animal Care & Control Association.
This course has been approved for 1.0 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval. Pass the quiz with a score of 70% or higher to access your CE certificate and then upload it to https://CEBroker.com. This is the broker that the AAVSB uses to track your continuing education credits.
Keywords: long stay shelter dogs, LOS, length of stay, obstacles to outcomes, daily walk-through, quarterly shelter census review process, management system for big dogs, animal behavior, big dogs, large dogs, dogs, Maximize physical and behavioral health, Animal & Population Management, Strategic & Operational Planning, Policies & Procedures, Foster Care, webcast
Rachel entered animal welfare in 2017 as a behavior dog foster for Ventura County Animal Services. By 2018, her foster-zealotry had consumed her so entirely that she moved to Arizona to work as one part of a new 4-person foster team at Pima Animal Care Center #thankstomaddie. During her time as a foster coordinator, she helped build one of the nation’s largest big dog foster programs, hosted numerous dog foster apprenticeships, wrote articles and presented on dog foster and volunteer programs for Maddie’s Fund, Austin Pets Alive! and the Missouri Coalition of Animal Care Organizations. In 2021, she worked with ASU’s Canine Science Collaboratory to coordinate a 40-dog study on the effects of foster care on shelter dogs and began developing an online shelter handling course for Maddie’s Fund.
She is currently PACC’s Urgent Dog Case Manager where she partners with volunteers to support harder-to-place dogs in-shelter and offer post-placement support to their fosters and adopters. Her favorite things in life are naughty dogs and when people include bullet points in emails. She also makes silly videos sometimes.
Kristen Hassen
Founder/Principal Consultant
Outcomes Consulting
Kristen Hassen is the founder and principal consultant of Outcomes Consulting, building safe, humane communities for pets and the people who love them. She also serves on the board of the National Animal Care and Control Association (NACA). Kristen is also the co-founder and former director of the Human Animal Support Services Project. Before this, she was the director at Pima Animal Care Center, the municipal animal shelter in Tucson, Arizona, that took in approximately 20,000 pets annually with a 92% live release rate. Prior to this, Kristen served as the deputy director at Austin Animal Services and the assistant director of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Fairfax, Virginia.
The impact of chronic trauma on animal behavior, how to prevent it and help animals recover.
Presenter: Dr. Sheila Segurson, Director, Maddie's Fund Research
As our communities become more informed about recognizing and responding to human trauma, there’s growing interest in the impact of chronic stress and trauma on animal behavior.
There’s a large volume of evidence that demonstrates the negative impact of trauma on human health and welfare. While research in animals isn’t focused on the concept of trauma, this session will share evidence that demonstrates the impact of stressful experiences on animal health and welfare. Acknowledgement of the role of trauma in animal behavior encourages us to be more understanding and respond more appropriately to undesirable or challenging behaviors that may be caused by trauma. This presentation will discuss practical ways you can prevent trauma and help animals to recover.
Learning Objectives:
Understand the impact of traumatic experiences on human and animal health and well-being.
Understand why the shelter environment can be a traumatic experience for most animals
Apply trauma-informed thinking to your interactions with animals
Develop trauma-informed management plans for dogs and cats
Continuing Education:
Earn 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and from the National Animal Care & Control Association.
This course has been approved for 1.0 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval. Pass the quiz with a score of 70% or higher to access your CE certificate and then upload it to https://CEBroker.com. This is the broker that the AAVSB uses to track your continuing education credits.
As Director of Outreach and Research for Maddie's Fund®, Dr. Sheila Segurson's goal is to develop and support research that increases pet adoptions from rescue groups and shelters and improves pet well-being. She relies upon her background working in and with animal shelters, pet foster care programs, and veterinary medicine to lead Maddie's Fund research efforts.
After graduating from UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Segurson worked as a general practice/emergency/shelter veterinarian at pet hospitals in California. Then, in 2005, Sheila graduated from Maddie's Shelter Medicine Program at UC Davis, becoming the first in the nation to complete a three-year, post-graduate behavior specialty training program with an emphasis on shelter animals and shelter behavior programs. She worked for several pet welfare organizations, including UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, The Sacramento SPCA, and the Animal Rescue League of Boston, where she developed and implemented enrichment/behavior modification programs.
2 great short sessions - "Reduce Risk and Improve Public Safety" with Sarah Aguilar AND "Get Your Community On Board with Keeping Big Dogs Out of the Shelter" with Dr. Ellen Jefferson and Bobby Mann
Presenters:
Sarah Aguilar, Senior Director of Operations, Austin Pets Alive Bobby Mann, Chief Programs Officer, St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center Dr. Ellen Jefferson, DVM, President and CEO Austin Pets Alive! and American Pets Alive!
Medium and large dogs pose a number of challenges for animal welfare and it’s easy to lose community support, including support from the government leadership, if there is an ongoing perception that it’s just too hard to achieve live outcomes for them. In this session, attendees will hear from three leaders who are experts in gaining public support for shelter pets.
Session 1: Reduce Risk and Improve Public Safety (25 minutes)
Sarah Aguilar teaches the critical safety factors shelters need to be tracking, including bites in the shelter and in the community, injuries to staff and volunteers, risk management claims, and safety incidents and responses in the shelter. She shares how animal shelters can create safety tool kits for kennel areas and what training animal shelters should provide to staff and volunteers related to safety. She connects all of this to the practice of reporting this information publicly, to help leadership and community members understand how safety and lifesaving are related.
Session 2: Get Your Community On Board with Keeping Big Dogs Out of the Shelter (25 minutes)
Dr. Ellen Jefferson and Bobby Mann talk about the programs that can help keep animals out of shelters in the first place, and how to gain public support for these programs and how to engage human services agencies to promote them.
Learning Objectives:
Learn how to track safety data and share it with the public to gain community support.
Learn how to create a culture of safety in their organization and how to keep shelter staff and volunteers safe and to mitigate risk factors.
Learn about the three programs that can keep big dogs out of shelters and how to gain community buy-in to start and grow these programs.
Continuing Education:
Earn 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and from the National Animal Care & Control Association.
This course has been approved for 1.0 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval. Pass the quiz with a score of 70% or higher to access your CE certificate and then upload it to https://CEBroker.com. This is the broker that the AAVSB uses to track your continuing education credits.
Keywords: Community support, live outcomes, dog bites, obstacles to outcomes management system for big dogs, animal behavior, big dogs, large dogs, Maximize physical and behavioral health, Animal & Population Management, Strategic & Operational Planning, Policies & Procedures, webcast
Sarah Aguilar is currently the Director of Santa Barbara Animal Services. Aguilar has a long history in animal services, most recently working as the senior director of operations at Austin Pets Alive in Austin, Texas. She has also served as the National Foster Programs manager at Greater Good Charities in Seattle; was the deputy director for the Pima Animal Care Center in Pima, Arizona; and previously worked as the foster care coordinator for Ventura County Animal Services.
Ellen Jefferson
President and CEO
Austin Pets Alive! and American Pets Alive!
Dr. Ellen Jefferson, a longtime shelter veterinarian, and groundbreaking animal welfare visionary, is the President and CEO of Austin Pets Alive!
Now a global leader in transformative animal welfare, Dr. Jefferson took over APA! in 2008, a grassroots, volunteer effort to protect Austin’s most vulnerable shelter pets. APA! has directly saved the lives of more than 100,000 at-risk pets from Austin and elsewhere in Texas.
Through tireless advocacy and APA’s lifesaving programs, in 2011 Dr. Jefferson achieved her dream to make Austin the country’s largest No Kill city, saving more than 90 percent of the city’s homeless pets.
Since that first benchmark year a decade ago, Austin has remained the safest city in America for shelter animals—in no small part thanks to Dr. Jefferson’s singular focus on those who are left behind: the dogs and cats often euthanized in other shelters because of age, medical condition, behavior, or who are otherwise considered by some to be simply “unsavable.”
Dr. Jefferson is also the founder of San Antonio Pets Alive!, an organization that has saved over 30,000 animals’ lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Expanding her reach far beyond Texas, Dr. Jefferson leads the work of American Pets Alive!, the national arm of APA!, which she founded in 2010.
AmPA! provides training and education to thousands of animal welfare professionals throughout the U.S. and the world, and helps animal shelters in this country and others implement the lifesaving programs that have been developed and tested in Austin over the past 15 years.
The American Pets Alive! conference, held annually in Austin, draws nearly 1,000 visitors to Austin and brings the leading animal welfare experts in the nation together to debate, teach, and lead the future of animal sheltering.
In 2020, at the start of the COVID pandemic, Dr. Jefferson met the urgent need to keep pets out of shelters and with people by launching Human Animal Support Services (HASS), an international collaborative movement to transform animal services to support the bond between pets and people.
HASS quickly grew, and today more than 1,000 animal welfare professionals in more than 400 animal welfare organizations across the U.S. and Canada are working together to change the way we care for pets and people in our communities.
In 2016, Austin’s mayor Steve Adler and the City of Austin named November 5 Ellen Jefferson Day, to recognize her tremendous contributions to the city’s pets and people. She was named the Non-Profit Executive of the Year in 2013 by Mission Capital, Austin’s leading nonprofit resource center.
Dr. Jefferson serves on the national steering committee for Best Friends Animal Society, the Shelter Advisory Council for Pedigree Foundation, and the North American COVID-19 Response Coalition.
Before her work with Austin Pets Alive!, Dr. Jefferson founded and served as the executive director of Emancipet, another organization that brought national recognition to Austin for its work to make veterinary care affordable and accessible to everyone.
Dr. Jefferson graduated from the Virginia Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine in 1997. She has 13 years of experience in private veterinary practice and over two decades of practicing shelter medicine. Among her many current passions are saving dogs with distemper and solving the toughest problems preventing progressive changes in the animal welfare industry.
Bobby Mann
Chief Programs Officer
St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center
In his role, Bobby oversees St. Hubert's organization’s advocacy efforts, community programs, humane education, and public pet services all with the goal of uplifting and keeping people and pets together. Bobby also oversees the WayStation program, St. Hubert’s best-in-class animal relocation program.
With more than a decade of experience at municipal animal shelters, Bobby’s deep operational expertise, leadership, and creativity have helped change the public’s perception of the animal welfare industry.
In his most recent role for American Pets Alive! as the Maddie’s® Human Animal Support Services (HASS) pilot director, Bobby's work focused on developing programs and protocols to implement community supported sheltering and help keep pets in homes with families who already love them.
Previously, Bobby spent more than a decade working in Sacramento animal shelters, at both the Sacramento SPCA and later at the state capital’s municipal organization, Front Street Animal Shelter.
Bobby is passionate about implementing and expanding programs that instill a people-first mindset, support youth engagement, further the inclusion of historically marginalized communities, and celebrate the love between people and pets.
2 great short sessions - "Proven Strategies for Minimizing Length of Stay" with Michele Figueroa and Clare Callison AND "Big Dog Marketing - The Easy Way" with Arin Greenwood, Caitlin Quinn and Kasey Spain
Presenters:
Michele Figueroa, Program Director, Pima Animal Care Center Clare Callison, Maddie’s® Director of National Pet Supply and Demand, American Pets Alive! Arin Greenwood, Editor, Writer, Communications Consultant, Human Animal Support Services Caitlinn Quinn, Director of Operations, HeARTs Speak, Inc. Kasey Spain, Marketing and Communications Senior Manager, American Pets Alive! and Human Animal Support Services
Session 1: Proven Strategies for Minimizing the Length of Stay (24 minutes)
Learn strategies for minimizing length of stay for medium and large dogs, from in-shelter techniques through adoption marketing.
Session 2: Big Dog Marketing - The Easy Way (26 minutes)
Topics discussed include: how to design and create a pipeline for great marketing materials on dogs in care, ensure that pets’ online profiles are kept up to date and that each dog is marketed robustly.
Learning Objectives:
Learn about barriers to adoption and how to avoid them
Learn what an intake-to-placement program is and how it works
Learn the difference between marketing and adoption counseling and how to ensure transparency while keeping them separate.
Learn how to create a protocol to ensure that every dog in their care is robustly marketed, with no one slipping through the cracks.
Continuing Education:
Earn 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and from the National Animal Care & Control Association.
This course has been approved for 0.5 continuing education credits in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval. Pass the quiz with a score of 70% or higher to access your CE certificate and then upload it to https://CEBroker.com. This is the broker that the AAVSB uses to track your continuing education credits.
Keywords: length of stay, adoption marketing, marketing big dogs, Community support, live outcomes, obstacles to outcomes management system for big dogs, animal behavior, big dogs, large dogs, Maximize physical and behavioral health, Animal & Population Management, Strategic & Operational Planning, Policies & Procedures, webcast
Director of Internal Operations at Pima Animal Care Center
Clare Callison
Maddie’s® Director of National Pet Supply and Demand
American Pets Alive!
Clare Callison is the Maddie’s® Director of National Pet Supply and Demand for American Pets Alive! and serves on the Board of Directors for CARE (Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity). She provides guidance and support to help organizations build robust lifesaving programs and improve operations to better serve people and pets. Clare specializes in helping organizations grow their transport relationships and increase their lifesaving through rescue partnerships and open adoption practices. Before joining American Pets Alive!, she was the Director of Operations for San Antonio Pets Alive for 5 years. Because of her heavy involvement, San Antonio has gone from a 28 percent live release rate to a 90 percent live release rate in over three years. Clare enjoys helping others seek lifesaving solutions to common challenges that exist in working in a high-volume, fast-paced animal welfare organization.
Arin Greenwood
Editor, Writer, Communications Consultant
Human Animal Support Services
Columbia Law School grad turned writer, editor, communications professional, and animal advocate.
I was The Huffington Post's animal welfare editor. My stories about cats, dogs, and other critters have been published in The Dodo, The Washington Post, Slate, The Today Show's website, the American Bar Association Journal, and many other publications. I now write, edit, and consult for animal nonprofits, and other clients. Please reach out to chat about possible projects we could work on together.
My novel Your Robot Dog Will Die was published by Soho Teen in 2018. Robot Dog won Creative Loafing's Best of the Bay award for best local author, was one of YALSA’s 2019 Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, and was a Children's Book Council Hot Off the Press pick. Robot Dog has been optioned by Centerboro Productions to turn into an animated series!
Please feel free to get in touch here on Linkedin, at aringreenwood at gmail.com, on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/aringreenwood), or on Twitter (https://twitter.com/arin_twit).
Caitlinn Quinn
Director of Operations
HeARTs Speak, Inc.
Caitlin is passionate about working with shelters and rescues to reimagine the way they tell their stories and connect with new audiences. She has served in the animal welfare field since 2008 and early on had the honor of working closely with diverse organizations across the U.S. to maximize resources, redesign policies, & find life-changing marketing solutions. In 2015 she got her MPA with a concentration in nonprofit management and in 2021 she began teaching shelter marketing for the University of Florida Master's in Shelter Medicine program. She currently shares her life with a petite brindle pit bull named Sally.
Kasey Spain
Marketing and Communications Senior Manager
American Pets Alive! and Human Animal Support Services
Kasey Spain is Maddie’s® Director of Marketing and Communications for American Pets Alive! and the Human Animal Support Services project. With a background as a Creative Director specializing in design and branding, Kasey has worked with brands such as Neiman Marcus, Lincoln Property Company, Chuy’s, Choctaw Casinos, TIGI Haircare and many more.
Kasey previously served as the Marketing and Communications Manager for the Austin Animal Center, the city’s municipal shelter. She received an Austin Addy Award and an Emmy nomination for her work on a lost pet awareness campaign produced for Austin Animal Center. As part of her contribution to the HASS project, Kasey leads the Marketing and Communications Working Group and Job-Alike peer group, and is passionate about helping HASS partner organization’s marketing staff to transform their services and communities through effective communication.
2 great short sessions - "Managing Big Dog Space Crises" with Clare Callison AND "Lifesaving Protocol for At-Risk Dogs" with Kristen Hassen
Presenters:
Clare Callison, Maddie’s® Director of National Pet Supply and Demand, American Pets Alive! Kristen Hassen, Founder and Principal Consultant, Outcomes Consulting
There are a number of factors that lead to big dogs facing a particularly precarious situation in animal shelters. While it's no fault of the dogs, size and breed restrictions are particularly detrimental to big dogs, causing them to sit in shelters longer and to be brought to shelters because their owners aren’t allowed to keep them. Behavioral and medical decline, particularly a problem during periods of high intake, can lead to space crises which force shelters to act urgently to avoid euthanizing dogs due to lack of space. Behavioral decline, often caused by the stress of shelter confinement, leads to sheltered dogs being slated for euthanasia when no immediate outcome options are available. These factors can lead to shelter workers and volunteers feeling helpless and demoralized like there is just no answer. Luckily, there are things you can do to save big dogs, even in the hardest of circumstances.
Session 1: Managing Big Dog Space Crises (28 minutes)
In this session, Clare Callison teaches you the proven steps you can take to get dogs into homes during periods of crisis or when dogs are at risk of euthanasia due to behavioral decline or a long length of stay. Students learn to implement easy, low cost or free strategies to get dogs out faster and avoid holding dogs indefinitely, with no solid plan.
Session 2: Lifesaving Protocol for At-Risk Dogs (37 minutes)
Kristen Hassen describes the proven ‘lifesaving protocol for at-risk dogs,’ now taught for more than five years to hundreds of shelters around the nation, and explains the steps to giving the public and rescues the chance to save a dog before it is euthanized due to length of time in a shelter, behavioral decline, or space constraints.
Learning Objectives:
Learn actionable steps to take to alleviate a big dog space crisis, which includes transfer and transport pleas, intake deferment of non-emergency intakes, emergency foster pleas, innovative adoption pushes, co-housing dogs, emergency marketing, and more
Implement the proven ‘lifesaving protocol for at-risk dogs,’ now taught for more than five years to hundreds of shelters around the nation.
Learn the steps to giving the public and rescues the chance to save a dog before it is euthanized due to length of time in a shelter, behavioral decline, or space constraints.
Learn the factors that lead to the needless euthanasia of dogs, the signs of a stagnated movement process, and how to make small changes to streamline dog movement through the system toward live outcomes.
Continuing Education:
Earn 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits from The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and from the National Animal Care & Control Association.
This course has been approved for 1.0 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval. Pass the quiz with a score of 70% or higher to access your CE certificate and then upload it to https://CEBroker.com. This is the broker that the AAVSB uses to track your continuing education credits.
Keywords: length of stay, adoption marketing, marketing big dogs, Community support, live outcomes, obstacles to outcomes management system for big dogs, animal behavior, big dogs, large dogs, Maximize physical and behavioral health, Animal & Population Management, Strategic & Operational Planning, Policies & Procedures, webcast
Maddie’s® Director of National Pet Supply and Demand
American Pets Alive!
Clare Callison is the Maddie’s® Director of National Pet Supply and Demand for American Pets Alive! and serves on the Board of Directors for CARE (Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity). She provides guidance and support to help organizations build robust lifesaving programs and improve operations to better serve people and pets. Clare specializes in helping organizations grow their transport relationships and increase their lifesaving through rescue partnerships and open adoption practices. Before joining American Pets Alive!, she was the Director of Operations for San Antonio Pets Alive for 5 years. Because of her heavy involvement, San Antonio has gone from a 28 percent live release rate to a 90 percent live release rate in over three years. Clare enjoys helping others seek lifesaving solutions to common challenges that exist in working in a high-volume, fast-paced animal welfare organization.
Kristen Hassen
Founder/Principal Consultant
Outcomes Consulting
Kristen Hassen is the founder and principal consultant of Outcomes Consulting, building safe, humane communities for pets and the people who love them. She also serves on the board of the National Animal Care and Control Association (NACA). Kristen is also the co-founder and former director of the Human Animal Support Services Project. Before this, she was the director at Pima Animal Care Center, the municipal animal shelter in Tucson, Arizona, that took in approximately 20,000 pets annually with a 92% live release rate. Prior to this, Kristen served as the deputy director at Austin Animal Services and the assistant director of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Fairfax, Virginia.
Check out our FAQs page for a list of commonly asked questions. If you are still in need of technical assistance, send us an email and we'll get back to you.
Contains 6 Component(s), Includes Credits
Contains 8 Component(s), Includes Credits
Contains 8 Component(s), Includes Credits
Contains 8 Component(s), Includes Credits
Contains 6 Component(s), Includes Credits
Contains 8 Component(s), Includes Credits
Contains 8 Component(s), Includes Credits
Contains 8 Component(s), Includes Credits
