Enriching our Shelters on a ShoestringBudget

Steve GowardDogs Trust

Aims for thisworkshop

• The meaning and importance of theterm ‘enrichment’

• The meaning of ‘quality of life’, andwhy we must be concerned if wecannot ensure a good quality of life foranimals at the shelter

• Discussion on how to ensureopportunities for enrichment and theimprovement of welfare & quality oflife in a shelter, especially on a budget,with limited staff.

What isenrichment ?

• The action of improving orenhancing the quality or value ofsomething.

• Enrichment makes somethingmore meaningful, substantial, orrewarding. Enrichment improvessomething.

• an animal husbandry principlethat seeks to enhance the qualityof captive animal care byidentifying and providing theenvironmental stimuli necessaryfor optimal psychological andphysiological well-being.

Why should weconsiderenrichment?

• "When an animal is under humancare, we have removed anexquisitely adapted organismfrom the environment thatshaped it over countless years.Stimulating their minds andactivity levels allows us, in somesmall way, to give them backwhat has been lost in thistransition." -Chris Jenkins CPBT-KA

What's thedifferencebetween Welfare& Quality of life?

• Welfare is a standard of carebased on the 5 freedoms andcan be attributed to a collectiveof animals in a given situation.

• Quality of life is based onindividuals and expands on thewelfare needs and how theindividual feels about access tothem and other resources.

Brambell's 5freedoms (1965)

- Freedom from thirst, hunger andmalnutrition by ready access to fresh waterand diet to maintain full health and vigour

- Freedom from discomfort by providing asuitable environment including shelter and acomfortable resting area

- Freedom from pain, injury and disease byprevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment

- Freedom to express normal behaviour – byproviding sufficient space, proper facilities andcompany of the animal’s own kind

- Freedom from fear and distress – by ensuringconditions which avoid mental suffering.

Welfare Assessment Protocol for Shelter DogsS. Barnard, C. Pedernera, A. Velarde, P. Dalla Villa

www.carodog.eu

What is qualityof life?

I hope I don’t get toldoff for this again

MmmmmmmI love my time inthe bath

Are shelters the bestplace for our dogs?

• What are the pros and cons

• If we were to ask a dog would they choosethe street or our shelter?

• If they choose the street then why?

• If they choose our shelter then why?

Balancing act

Research backs up whatwe would expect to seefrom animals going in toa novel environmentwith limited choices andoften unpredictableroutines. These experiences, combined with the

diversity in the quality of care provided to dogsentering these shelters, likely contribute to thestress experienced by many dogs in the kennel

environment (Beerda et al., 2000).

Dogs entering rescue shelters encounterpotentially stressful novel experiences, such as

new surroundings; new routines; unfamiliarsights, sounds, and smells; and unfamiliar

people and other dogs (Hennessy, Williams,Miller, Douglas, & Voith, 1998).

What is stress?

• Stress is an organism's response to astressor such as an environmentalcondition.

What makes agood shelter/dogrescue facility?

Bdaarc.com

(credit: The Barkley)

Or these?Or these?

Recipe for success

The people

The Building

The protocols

The Numbers

Recipe for poor welfare

The people

The Building

The protocols

The Numbers

The people

• Vet team• Canine carers• Training team• Managers• Volunteers• Fund raisers• Education team• Adopters

The better understanding the dog handlers have of their impact thegreater the impact they will have

So my first major suggestion is……..

Invest in the people

Google images

Google images

Develop thepeople - improvethe welfare

This works for the dogs and thepeople

When you invest in people theyfeel part of something bigger

Get their feedback, ask them whythey do things a certain way & howthey might do things differently

Then consider thenumbers…..

• How many animals?• How many people?• How much space?• How much money?• How much time?

• So should we build ourshelters for the amountof dogs that need ourhelp?

• Or the amount of dogswe can actually help?

Reducing numbers is very difficult

To have a good understanding of our ability to care for the dogs inour organisations we need good assessment processes in place.

Having the ability to recognise poor welfare sets us on a path ofchange.

It will not happen quickly

These are just 2 resources to consider when creating standards of carefor your shelter

Case study –Animal RescueSofia

• First visited in 2013 when theymanaged a municipal shelter

• 500 + dogs

• Limited staff/volunteers

• Regular dog fights and deaths

• Disease

“Holding 500 hundred dogs with alimited funding meant that 90% ofour funds were spent on dog foodand staff salaries. Our spay/neuterand educational programssuffered from constant lack offunding”.

Svetlo Petrov told me…

More dogs - less time.Our dog carers were

barely able to feed andclean with no time left tospend with the dogs and

work with them.

• “Noise levels in the mainhousing area was deafeningparticularly when peopleentered the area”.

“Now the noise levels are much lower, there areno cases of dog fights and all our animals look a lothappier. Having the dog runs where every dogspends an hour daily reduces the stress levels to aminimum”

A new veterinary suite improves health care

So did they enrich these dogs lives?

• Is it a better place to be?

• Do they get more quality time?

• Do they receive better veterinary care?

• Are their chances of rehoming improved?

Shelter design

• Get help!

• Don’t make the same mistakes as others

• Consider the design from both the dogs andpeoples perspective

How did they do it?

How do we balance –Numbers V’s Standards

• Shelter built to help 100 dogs has apopulation of 200 dogs what are the likelyeffects of this overcrowding?

1. Money per dog2. Time per dog – social, exercise,

enrichment3. Ease of cleaning4. Vet care

Do the maths

• If your cost per dog to ensure appropriate welfare is Rp??

• And you cut this in half by doubling the numbers the result can onlybe a deterioration of welfare.

My top 5enrichmentopportunities

1 enrich their health

2 enrich the living quarters

3 enrich your handling

4 enrich their daily activities

5 enrich their feeding habits

Enrich their health

• A good veterinaryprogramme is essential forgood welfare

• Having the right number ofdogs that you can afford tomedically treat is the onlyway to achieve positivemedical welfare

Enrich theaccommodation• This may be as simple as

adding levels or moreshade, better sleepingareas or areas to escapeconflict.

• It may be that you getthem out of cages or offchains.

Enrich your handling• Awareness of body language and when a

dog is feeling anxious or fearful will helpyou build trust with the dogs in your care.

• The less time spent being anxious orfearful the greater the welfare

• Time spent with a dog is possibly one ofthe most enriching things we can do forthem.

Enrich their dailyactivities• Having nothing to do and not

being able to act out naturalbehaviours can have adetrimental effect on thedogs wellbeing.

• Consider what you can do tooffer enrichment activitieslike walks, scent areas, playareas, social areas.

As a social species how must it feel to live alife of solitude?

Where do you think he would rather be?

or

Volunteers

• These dogs in a Hong Kong Shelter werebeing walked by a local college as part oftheir education programme

Enrich the feeding

• Might be as simple aslooking at the way youfeed, what you feedand how often.

• Lots of ways toencourage naturalscavenging, searchingand problem solvingbehaviours.

It can even be portable

Note of caution whenenriching food delivery• How would you feel if you were

very hungry but your food wasinside a safe that you had toguess the combination of?

• Avoid using difficult games withhungry dogs

• Avoid using food toys in groups ofdogs

Food activity toys

Look at what is around you and think how it couldbecome an interactive toy

Get local schools or clubs to makethings for you

Look online to find hundreds ofideas. These images all came fromwww.Pinterest.co.uk

Quality of life

• If you thought assessingwelfare was hard then thisis really going to test yourresilience

In Belshaw’spaper it wasdefined as

• an individual’s satisfaction with itsphysical and psychological health, itsphysical and social environment and itsability to interact with that environment’.In this definition, health was taken tomean ‘the state of being free from illnessor injury and satisfaction to be ‘thefulfilment of one’s individual needs, orpositive mood or valence derived fromthis.

(Belshaw et al 2015)

Why should wemeasure qualityof life?

QOL measurement can tell ushow our animals feel abouttheir circumstances.

This awareness will help usshape our approach to animalhandling, shelter building andoverall protocols within ourorganisations.

Can we measure quality of life if wecant ask them how they are feeling?

• The QoL of people is also measured in non-medicalcircumstances in which individuals are theresponsibility of others, such as in care homes forthe elderly. Here too, the focus is shifting fromsimply measuring the provision of basic care to allresidents, to include the experiences of individuals(eg Innes & Surr 2001).

• Many such individuals may be unable to completeself-report QoL instruments. For them, and forother non- verbal or cognitively impaired people inthe care of the medical profession or others, analternative to self-report must be used.

Who shouldassess qualityof life?

• Animal welfare scientists are working onmethods that allow animals to tell us howthey feel, but as yet these are not easy to useoutside a research setting.

• For now, the best placed person to assess thequality of life of an animal is often the personwho knows that animal well.

• Assessments generally rely on interpretationof the motivation and meanings of specificbehaviours, so the people who spend mosttime with the animal may be best placed tomake sense of why they do what they do.However, many owners are not experts inanimal behaviour, and they may misinterpretor overlook particularly importantbehaviours.

(Z Belshaw 2018)

How do weknow when theyare suffering ifthey can’tcommunicate?

• We must understand the animalsethology

• We must be able to interpret theirvocalisations and body languageproperly

• We must appreciate the impact ofdenying them freedom to expresscertain behaviours

• We must improve our knowledge andunderstanding of the species we aretrying to help

Pain,discomfort andQOL

• In the case of suffering causedby pain, it has been arguedstrongly (Anand & Craig 1996;Cunningham 1999) that thosewho do not have a voice have agreater need for robustmeasurement than do thosewho can more easily make theirviews known. Animals are, ofcourse, among those whocannot tell us how they feel.

QOL and treatment &euthanasia considerations

• The measurement of QoL will facilitate decision-making on the treatment of individual animals,whether active or palliative, including decisionsregarding the appropriateness of euthanasia.

• There are circumstances other than impairedhealth that may affect the QoL of companionanimals. For example, long- term kennelling ofrescue dogs may compromise the QoL of someindividuals to an unacceptable degree.

Scott et al 2007

Points toconsider

• The concept of quality of life can be difficultto apply to animals, but using terms such as‘happiness’ may be a useful approximation.

• Quality of life assessment should not berestricted to euthanasia decision making, butinstead monitored and optimised througheach animal’s life. Use assessments that aimto improve an animals’ quality of life ratherthan monitoring it through decline until thepoint that euthanasia is deemed necessary.

• A wide range of formats of quality of lifeassessment exist. None are perfect, but allhave their place. Doing something is likely tobe better than doing nothing.

Please make time tomake a plan

• Attending conferences and workshops is just thefirst step

• Get together with other local shelters and discusswelfare improvements that you want to make.

• Make a plan for the year then for the year afterthat!

• Things are not likely to happen quickly so set goalswith a number of dates in place to track progress.

(Google images)

References

• McMillan, F.D., 2000. Quality of life in animals. Journal of the American VeterinaryMedical Association 216, 1904–1910.

• Scott, E.M., Nolan, A.M., Reid, J., Wisemann-Orr, M.L., 2007. Can we reallymeasure animal quality of life? Methodologies for measuring quality of life inpeople and other animals. Animal Welfare 16, 17–24.

• Z. Belshaw *, L. Asher, N.D. Harvey, R.S. Dean 2015 Quality of life assessment indomestic dogs: An evidence-based rapid review. The Veterinary Journal 206(2015) 203–212

• Wiseman-Orr, M.L., Scott, E.M., Reid, J., Nolan, A.M., 2006. Validation of astructured questionnaire as an instrument to measure chronic pain in dogs on thebasis of effects on health-related quality of life. American Journal of VeterinaryResearch 67, 1826–1836.

• R Botreau, I Veissier, A Butterworth, MBM Bracke and LJ Keeling. Definition ofcriteria for overall assessment of animal welfare. Animal Welfare 2007, 16: 225-228 ISSN 0962-7286

• Zoe Belshaw MA Vet MB PhD Cert SAM Dip ECVIM-CA AFHEA MRCVS, Centre forEvidence-based Veterinary Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine and Science,University of Nottingham. Companion animal May 2018, Volume 23 No 5