Tags: Resources

Our Best Practice Webinars

Sharing Resources for Shelters and Rescue Organizations

Throughout the year, we partner with innovative organizations that are doing groundbreaking work to increase dog adoptions, including our annual Dogs rule.^TM grant recipient, to produce webinars that showcase their work. Here, we are making all our webinars available in once place.

Welcome Committee: Helping Dogs Transition to the Shelter

In this webinar, led by San Diego Humane Society, you’ll hear an overview of the Welcome Committee Initiative, which was created to address the unique challenges faced by dogs experiencing fear, anxiety and stress in the shelter. The webinar outlines the comprehensive approach the initiative takes, including multiple departments from Admissions and Operations Leadership to Animal care, Behavior & Training and Volunteer Engagement. Further, the webinar explores the program’s core components, like enriched housing, additional enrichment activities, and focused, practical behavior plans.

Welcome Committee: Training for Staff & Volunteers, Lessons Learned from the Welcome Committee Program

In this webinar, led by San Diego Humane Society, you’ll explore the training components of the Welcome Committee educational program, including the structured educational framework developed to ensure staff and volunteers are well-versed in modern, science-based canine behavior and training protocols. This includes a detailed look at the program’s required courses, the implementation of chunked learning for effective knowledge retention and the integration of assessment components to gauge learning outcomes. Further, the webinar covers the challenges and triumphs of designing and implementing an impactful educational program within the shelter environment.

Bark to Basics: Creative Adoption Ideas for Dog Adoptions

In this webinar, led by Kristen Hassen, you’ll hear from the shelters and rescues who are increasing dog adoptions through innovative adoption and foster programs, events, and incentives. They provide concrete, easy-to-implement ideas to get more dogs into homes faster – a recipe book of real solution that can be implemented without a lot of time or resources.

Build Your Dog Adoption Super Highway

Hosted by Kristen Hassen, this webinar outlines common practices and policies that are keeping animals stuck in shelters, easy changes you can make to speed up your dog flow, the WIRC model of customer service (welcome, inform, respect, celebrate), how to ask for and accept help, and how to get your community on board. You’ll have access to examples from real-life shelters who are having adoption success, even in this difficult moment. The toolkit is designed for all levels of staff and volunteers.

Keeping Families Together

In this webinar, Director of Human Animal Support Services Kristen Hassen walks through the HASS Safety Net Toolkit and shares the basics of helping people keep their pets instead of taking them to shelters. This toolkit is intended to make pet support program implementation accessible to everyone – regardless of the size and budget of your organization. It can also be utilized by just about anyone who wants to build more support services for pets and people in their community, including all levels of shelter professionals. Included is how-to information on safety net foster programs, access to care and resources, and helping pet owners secure pet-inclusive, affordable housing.

ComPAWtibility Match

This webinar highlights resources developed to enhance interactions with potential fosters and adopters, as well as existing adopters. The resources include compatibility matching quizzes, a matchmaker program, virtual home visits and adoption events, a text-based foster program, and a post-adoption support program.

Virtual Foster Program

This webinar showcases a new program that paired dedicated volunteers with dogs who had been in a shelter for the longest time as “virtual fosters.” These dogs get the benefits of a traditional foster home – like personal and consistent interaction – while still residing at the shelter.