Homeless Dogs

 Training Old Dogs In Baltimore MD

In the past several years it has come to our attention that there seem to be more and more stray dogs on the streets of our great city.  In some areas the local dog catchers have had to work overtime.  In areas where in the past there have only been occasional strays, whole packs have been menacing the local pets.  As these strays have been brought in most have no comprehension of basic obedience commands.  Worse yet many are aggressive towards strange people.  We have taken on the challenge of trying to train and domesticate these once domestic dogs.  And training old dogs in Baltimore MD has become a major effort if we hope to find homes and save the lives of any of these strays.

 

Getting Dog Kennel Cooperation

The first challenge in training these older dogs has been in getting the local human societies and other stray pound type facilities to allow volunteers like us to work with these dogs.  They are so over run with animals and are so focused on finding homes before they have to euthanize them, that they don’t have time to do much more than care for the bare necessities of each animal.  Our efforts unfortunately get in the way and make it harder for the workers at these facilities to keep up with their basic care.  So we have instituted in our volunteer efforts more than dog training.  We also have to spend a lot of our time helping these workers do their job.

As soon as we started this approach, although it takes quite a bit of effort to get volunteers approved, the workers are a lot more willing to cooperate with our training efforts.  Now please understand almost all of these workers love and do their best to care for the animals they bring in.  But they only have so much time and energy and seeing how many end up getting euthanized makes them not want to get attached.  This is where we come in.  Dogs that behave well and are kind to people get adopted much faster than those that don’t.  The workers at these facilities seem to be seeing us now as a way to really help save and get homes for more dogs.  But training old dogs has its challenges.

 

Training Old Dogs In Baltimore, MD Pounds

By far our biggest challenge is time.  There are so many animals and so little time.  Shelters typically wait between 72 hours and 5 days before euthanizing animals that are brought in.  It is only if the dog has identification on them that allows the animal shelters a way to contact it owners that some shelters will keep them alive up to two weeks.  Our efforts are focused on the ones without identification because they are the ones who have the shortest time and generally the worst behavior issues.  And we have been typically focusing on the helping the shelters who keep the dogs up to 5 days, because there is more time to make a difference.  Our dog training efforts is a race against the clock.

 

Types Of Dog Training Focused On

Since time is so short and our efforts spread between so many, our volunteers are forced to look for animals that have the best chance for improvement.  We look for dogs where slight behavior improvement is enough to make them a desirable pet. 

As soon as a dog arrives we make quick assessments to identify the best candidates.  Then we give love and attention along with simple training and rewards.  For example if the dog just seems a little bashful around strange humans, we try our best to expose them to as many people in the most positive fun ways as possible.   Training old dogs in Baltimore, MD shelters is not easy.

 

Focusing On Our Successes

Since there are so many dogs that we can’t work with, and since so many of the dogs we do work with still end up euthanized volunteering in our efforts can become very discouraging.  I think what makes it the most difficult is that to really make a change in these animals quickly, we have to let ourselves bond with and become attached to them.  Dogs, especially the older dogs, know if you are faking, and they won’t progress.  We can’t become numb to these animals like many of the workers do or we wouldn’t be able to save the few we do.  So we constantly face seeing dogs that we love euthanized despite our best efforts. 

All we can do is focus on our successes.  What gets us through is remembering and thinking about the dog that got adopted.  Those that had a behavior that we were able to quickly turn around and then that had a family fall in love with them.  That is what keeps us going and what makes the whole effort worth continuing.  If we think about anything else it would quickly become too overwhelming to handle. 

 

What Can You Do?

We often get asked by dog lovers who don’t have the time to help in our efforts what they can do.  The best thing you can do is to either adopt a dog as your own family pet, or adopt one to then find a home for.  This is what would be the biggest help.  We have some volunteers who can’t spend the time at the shelters that we do.  So what they do is the come in and look the dogs over and find one that they think they can help, that they connect with.  Then they adopt the dog, take them home, and train away all of its bad behaviors.  Once the dog really starts progressing they start advertising to fine the dog a permanent home.  And then they do the whole process again.  Doing it this way is very fulfilling and has a very high success rate.  To learn how some basic dog training skills see this article entitled “TrainingYour German Shepherd Puppy”.  Although the article focuses on German Shepherd puppies the basic principles it teaches really apply to all dogs.