General Learning Principles and How to Apply in Daily Shelter Interactions

Teaching animals in our shelter useful skills helps them and our staff. New skills can make that animal's life better as it accesses more rewards and is hopefully developing desirable behaviors for post-adoption; a dog or cat with more desirable behavior can make our staff's lives better by the animal being easier to handle each time they need to interact. In every interaction we have with an animal, they are learning something. This means that anyone that interacts with a dog or cat, whether kennel staff, the adoption team, the marketing team or more can have a positive impact on its behavior, with a little understanding of basic principles and consideration for what the animal is learning from us. In this session, Dr. Feuerbacher reviews the basics of animal learning and focuses on routine examples of how we can easily apply these principles in our daily interactions with shelter animals. This session is especially designed for the non-behavior professional to learn how small changes in our behavior can have big impact for the animals in our care. 

Note: The title of this presentation is also known as The Daily Grind: Using Everyday Consequences to Improve Animal Sheltering

This presentation was recorded at the 2022 ASPCA Maddie's Cornell Shelter Medicine Conference.

Presenter: Erica Feuerbacher, PhD, CAAB, BCBA-D 

This lecture has been approved for 1 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval.

This program 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.  

keywords  2022 ASPCA Maddie's Cornell Shelter Medicine Conference, animal behavior, animal sheltering, animal interaction, basics of animal learning, non-behavior professional shelter staff