caninecountryacademy

Here were some of the great articles written on our program at Gwinnett County Animal Shelter:

http://loganville.patch.com/articles/gwinnett-animal-shelter-graduates-georgias-first-class-certified-dog

http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2011/oct/06/training-program-turns-shelter-dogs-into-class/

Yesterday was a great and momentous day at Gwinnett County Animal Shelter.  This is what happens after you take two wonderful dogs and two wonderful volunteers and put them in a room to test their skills!!   Jennifer took Mandy through the C.L.A.S.S. evaluation and Jorie handled our little Rotti mix (now named Gigi by her new owner).  Lt. Respess had invited the press to come and boy did they show up!  We had 3 different news channels represented, one big newspaper and a reporter from a local patch site.

Mandy struggled a little with focus with all those flashy cameras in the room and was not able to complete all the skills on the evaluation, but Jennifer did a wonderful job with her on the items they did complete and after the test Mandy trotted off with her new owner!  We were so excited that she has a forever home to go to.

Gigi was the second dog to be evaluated and after the test was over she became Georgia’s very first C.L.A.S.S. certified dog!  She passed with Honors, which means she executed two tricks in addition to the required behaviors.  Jorie handled her extremely well and got to pass her off to her new owner after the evaluation as well.

The next thing we knew today was not only had all this been aired on the local news stations, but the article was on the front page of the Gwinnett Daily Post as well as the Loganville-Grayson Patch site!  This recognition and exposure was wonderful and will hopefully help us to recruit more volunteers for the program at the shelter.  We are so fortunate to have the dedicated volunteers helping out that we do and the more volunteers we have, the more dogs we can train and hopefully get moved more quickly out of the shelter.  I have never been more proud of the C.L.A.S.S. program than I was today.  After spending 18 months of my life to develop it, to see it now being utilized to save dogs lives through training and mental stimulation and to encourage the humans that work with these dogs that they can make a difference, is an awesome thing.

Well, I guess this is what happens when you are ready to test your first two shelter C.L.A.S.S.™ dogs….they are scheduled to be evaluated for the BA and BOTH dogs were adopted this week!  A very special thanks to Jennifer and Jorie who worked with both Mandy and the little Rotti mix so diligently and helped them hone some great real life skills.  Both dogs will still be evaluated this Thursday but we are overjoyed that both of them have great forever homes to go to!

Here are some pictures of another lovely dog we are working with in the C.L.A.S.S. program at Gwinnett shelter.  Our volunteer Jorie has been working with this sweet dog who is available for adoption.  He is a quick learner and has already mastered stationary commands and a few tricks!  Thank you to Jorie’s husband for taking some great pictures!

“Wiggles” as she has been named, is one of the dogs from this neglect case (http://www.cbsatlanta.com/video?clipId=6143634&flvUri=&partnerclipid=&topVideoCatNo=0&c=&autoStart=true&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=fl).

Julie, one of our C.L.A.S.S. volunteers, has been working with Wiggles for the past several weeks and shares her story below:

This is Wiggles. She is a very bright and loving little girl. Wiggles is in the process of learning to come when called, sit, down, turn and touch. She’s got all but the last two down cold as long as there is food involved. She is getting much better on ‘touch’ but is still a bit confused on the ‘turn’.

Wiggles is what is known as a ‘neglect case’. She and 12 other dogs were removed from a home where they were living in deplorable conditions. You can imagine what that means; but if you’re unsure, let me just say that criminal charges are pending. When Wiggles first arrived at the shelter, she was literally skin and bone. She has put on at least 6 pounds and is looking pretty good now; especially since I gave her a bath. (She didn’t like it very much.) In addition to being very skinny she has other issues. She has a grade 5 heart murmur (that’s pretty bad), an enlarged heart and does not put weight on one of her front legs. The vets think that she has some sort of a shoulder problem but are unable to see anything on the x-rays. At first we were not sure if she had been spayed or not, but further examination shows that she was indeed spayed. This is very happy news for Wiggles. You see, before an animal can be adopted out from the shelter it must be spayed/neutered. Due to the severity of her heart murmur it was determined that Wiggles would probably not survive the surgery, nor would she survive giving birth to puppies. This would have meant that Wiggles would have been declared un-adoptable. But happily, that is no longer a concern.

Just got this picture from Mary Lou today…..this beautiful girl was adopted this weekend.  Janice, one of our volunteers had been working with her in C.LA.S.S. and she was doing so well with all the behaviors she was taught.  We know she will make her new family very happy!!

Here is a picture of one of the C.L.A.S.S. dogs from Gwinnett Shelter that was adopted out.  They named her Sugar cause she’s just so sweet!!

We had a fun class today!  Added a new Rotti mix who worked beautifully for her first time in class.  We started removing our food lure for stationary behaviors and got some great leash work in!  There were more C.L.A.S.S. dogs adopted in the last week.  I’ll be posting pictures shortly.

There will be a presentation at the Jackson County Humane Society this coming Saturday, September 10th from 10am to noon on body language and calming signals for those interested in learning more about how dogs communicate.  Click here for more information:  http://www.hsjc.com/events_dog_saying.html

This is the terrier that got adopted this week that volunteer Jorie had been working with!!  Such a cutie!

Check out some videos (the latest three uploaded) from our classes at the shelter:  http://www.youtube.com/user/CanineCountryAcademy?blend=21&ob=5