More of What We Do

A lot of the GADAB dogs have to be interacted with through a kennel door - they've either not been cleared by the staff behaviorist for direct human interaction or they've failed a temperament test. In either case, we take maximum advantage of the situation to work as closely with the dog as we can. A lot depends on them. If they're shut down or scared all we can do at first is use short visits to gain their trust. If they're more affiliative we can engage them in all sorts of behaviors and even train them to sit, stay, fetch, and high-five. Junior, seen here, is an example of the latter. We've trained him to retrieve a ball and release it on command. The back-scratcher on the floor in the foreground is used to scratch his ears as a form of reward.