When we tell people that we pair at risk youth with shelter dogs in a program that “Shapes Both Ends of the Leash” – people nod and smile – but they don’t really “get it”!
We often compare the program to prison inmates training dogs. People begin to get an idea of what we do.
Our youth are referred to the program from juvenile justice agencies, private and public schools. Most have problem behaviors, all benefit from learning valuable life lessons.
How does this work? The youth are assigned a dog from a community shelter to train for 5 weeks. Three times a week. We try to match “like” with “like”. Shy dogs with shy youth. The youth work to overcome shyness by encouraging the dog to come out of its shell. In the process of providing the shelter dogs with much needed enrichment and some good skills, the youth learn incredible life lessons themselves.
Shelters are typically overcrowded and understaffed. The “gap” between providing care and enrichment can make a huge difference in a dog’s sociability and general “adoptability”. Pawsitive Works mission is to help the overlooked and harder to adopt dogs become more adoptable, to highlight them in media efforts and to bring awareness of their needs to the general community.
Youth are every community’s future. Helping them to learn empathy, increase self-esteem and understand behavior modification is key to helping them become productive members of society.
The dogs are available for adoption but we ask adopters to allow them to complete their
community service before going home with them. We celebrate the completion of the program with a graduation ceremony. We love watching the youth “hand over” their training dogs to new owners.
Truly amazing… heartwarming and life changing…
Pawsitive Works!
