Risky Business: Preventing Dog Bites with Risk Assessment

You know that famous saying, ‘No risk, No reward’? There’s risk in almost everything we do. When it comes to animal welfare, we’re fortunate that seriously aggressive behavior is rare. Even if infrequent, we hope to protect public safety by preventing animals at high risk of causing serious harm from being placed in homes. Behavior assessment tests were standard of care; however, we now know that behavior assessment tests of shelter dogs don’t reliably and accurately predict the occurrence of aggressive behavior in a home environment. So how do we identify animals who are a significant public safety risk and protect the public? During this presentation, we’ll talk about risk assessment and how animal welfare organizations can assess the risk of placing dogs into the community.

Presenter: Sheila Segurson, DVM, DACVB, CDBC, CCBC, Director of Research @ Maddie’s Fund

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

This lecture has also 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.

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keywords behavior assessment, shelter medicine, 2022 ASPCA Maddie's Cornell Shelter Medicine Conference, shelter dogs, dog aggression, aggressive behavior, public safely, risk assessment