AWLA Hawk

The front-page article in the winter edition of AWLA’s Pawpourri newsletter is about behavior evaluations for dogs. It’s much longer than a typical Pawpourri article — seven full columns — and includes an excerpt from a 2003 article in Animal Sheltering, a magazine published by Wayne Pacelle’s HSUS.

(This is the same HSUS that in February, 2009 concluded that all 150 dogs seized during a Wilkes County, NC dog-fighting raid should be killed, regardless of their behavior and despite offers of assistance and resources from rescue groups throughout the country. HSUS even insisted on killing puppies born after the raid, and forced a rescue-group volunteer to return puppies so that it could kill them.)

The 2003 Animal Sheltering article cited in Pawpourri states that evaluations allow a shelter to “prevent dangerous dogs from being released back into the community. Evaluations give you a basis for placement and euthanasia decisions…”

The Pawpourri article asserts that AWLA staff has invested significant effort and time in mastering the evaluation process, which involves observing the dog’s body language, assessing how it reacts when handled by the evaluator, noting whether it guards resources like rawhide or food, poking it with an artificial arm and hand while it’s eating to see how it behaves, etc.

The AWLA evaluators note the dog’s performance on the various tests that comprise the assessment, then conclude whether the dog should be offered for adoption, and if so, whether any restrictions (e.g. prior dog-ownership, no children under age 8…) should be applied. On rare occasions, dogs that AWLA considers unsuitable for adoption are offered to one or two rescue organizations. Far more often, AWLA kills these dogs.

The problem is that AWLA’s evaluations are undertaken in a shelter environment, where many (if not most) dogs are confused, stressed, and scared — not to mention possibly hungry or sick. A dog who has recently arrived at an animal shelter confronts an alien environment populated by a steady stream of people and dogs that it doesn’t know. From the dog’s perspective, it’s a chaotic, ever-changing pack with no obvious leader.

Dogs thrive in a human-family environment because that environment mimics the pack structure they instinctively crave. They want to belong to a pack with a confident human leader, with their own place in the pack well defined. Clear rules and relationships within the pack allow a dog to relax, since it knows it can trust the leader to define, feed, and defend the pack. If the leader makes it clear that the pack includes other people and dogs, or even cats or rabbits, the dog will accept these pack members without feeling threatened.

When AWLA evaluators recommend that a dog be offered for adoption or killed based on a half-hour of poking, prodding, and test-driving at the shelter, they’re studying a couple of trees. Here’s the forest they’re missing: the vast majority of dogs (e.g. 98% of Michael Vick’s impounded pitbulls) can be trained or rehabilitated to become well-behaved members of a human-led family. They just need to be given a chance, which means AWLA needs to find them a foster home itself, transfer them to a rescue organization that will do that, or offer them to a sanctuary.

That is what DC-area rescue organizations — like Lost Dog, Homeward Trails, A Forever Home, Best DAWG, Bully Paws, and others — do to save homeless dogs week in and week out. In early January, AFH found homes for 39 dogs in a single week, despite the fact that it runs on a shoestring budget and possesses no shelter infrastructure.

What might AWLA’s dog-sheltering operation look like if AWLA were run by the people who manage one of these successful rescue organizations?

– Highly-adoptable and easygoing dogs would be showcased and promoted at AWLA adoption events and through web advertising and neighborhood flyers.

– Untrained, assertive, and hard-to-handle dogs would be assigned to experienced AWLA volunteers willing to foster and train these dogs, which would then be listed for adoption on the AWLA website.

– AWLA would e-mail a weekly notice to all of the established dog-rescue organizations in the DC area listing dogs that it couldn’t offer for adoption, rehabilitate, or place in foster homes. The rescue organizations would be encouraged to claim these dogs.

– Unless it were suffering from a painful and incurable disease or condition, no dog in AWLA’s care would be killed without being given every chance to find a permanent home, foster home, or sanctuary. In other words, AWLA would implement Oreo’s Law.

Despite Arlington County’s small geographic size and the relatively low number of stray or surrendered dogs presented to AWLA, none of these practices are performed by AWLA now.

It’s not a matter of funding — AWLA’s income and assets dwarf those of shelters that achieve better animal outcomes. It’s a matter of effort and will. With the right leadership at AWLA, Arlington County’s animal shelter could join the elite cadre that sets the national standard for competence and compassion in caring for homeless animals.