Many dogs in shelters are waiting for their new family, and many people are looking to welcome a shelter dog into their home and start their lives together. However, the reality is not that easy. However, due to the dog’s undesirable behaviors, the reality is that many shelter dogs 1) experience long stays in the shelter until their adoption, 2) are surrendered to the shelters, and 3) in the worst case, are euthanized. A dog’s desirable behavior toward new people is one of the major determinants of their adoption. How can we ensure shelter dogs learn to do desirable behaviors to the new people they meet? It is no secret that well-trained volunteers are required to help meet the daily needs of dogs waiting to be adopted in animal shelters and to find new homes for them. Volunteers dedicate their time and are critical to the success of the shelter and the dogs. However, animal shelters often lack access to the resources and funds required to provide adequate training for volunteers. What can the volunteers do on daily basis to ensure shelter dogs learning the desirable behaviors to get them adopted and stay adopted? Meet Dr. Sean, a leader of CAAWT! He conducted his doctoral research on creating a cost-effective volunteer training program! He created a simple and short instructional video to teach Constructional Affection to the volunteers. The instructional video taught Constructional Affection, a training technique that uses affection in the form of petting and gentle stroking to build desirable behaviors and interaction between dogs and humans, because the behaviors dogs learn through this training technique have also been proven through previous research to get dogs adopted. The results of this study demonstrated that the instructional video effectively taught shelter volunteers how to implement Constructional Affection. Furthermore, the results showed that the volunteers' implementation of Constructional Affection increased the dogs' desirable behaviors likely to get them adopted. These findings provide new insight into types of training that can be useful for shelters and other rescue organizations lacking funds for training, and behaviors that should be targeted to promote the adoption of dogs in shelters. During the webinar, Dr. Sean will present the full story of his research, starting with his life’s mission, how he turned his idea into a research question, how he conducted his research, and the research findings! With guided videos and graphs, you will enjoy learning the ins and outs of his research! We believe his research will help shape the future of how volunteer training is conducted and what behaviors need to be taught for both the volunteers and shelter dogs to help get the dogs adopted and stay adopted! We welcome all the people dedicated to helping and working with shelter dogs in Japan! Come explore Dr. Sean's groundbreaking doctoral research on helping dogs get adopted! You don’t want to miss this! We hope this webinar invites discussion aiming toward helping shelter dogs meet their new family and the new family enjoy their lives together!

Sponsor:Constructional Approach to Animal Welfare and Training (CAAWT)
Speaker(s):Dr. Sean Will & Maasa Nishimuta, M.S., BCBA

Contact: Dr. Sean Will
 Email: caawtcontact@gmail.com
 Web: https://www.caawt.com/