“I am a firm believer that here, at our shelter, we should not be placing marginal dogs or cats.  Our adopters come in here and are already marginal pet owners—not a ton of pet experience, they really want a pet to love and cherish—they aren’t coming in here saying “give me the most challenging dog you have—a dog that needs a lot of work!!”  We want to set our adopters up to succeed by placing good dogs that don’t need a lot of work to become good citizens of the home and good citizens of the community.  But, I also realize that our adopters EXPECT us to place good dogs with them.  We have built a trust with the community that we will do our best to make sure that our adoption program is full of social, human-friendly, dog-friendly dogs.  Not all dogs are perfect, but we really want to place the best ones into the homes of our customers.”

Allison Miller

Fort Wayne, Animal Care & Control

 

 

Silke is a certified "Assess-A-Pet" evaluator.  She screens dogs in shelters, and with her program "Choose a Shelter Dog" tries to match the right dog with the right people. 

 

Assess-a-Pet™ is a method by which a shelter dog's temperament can be evaluated. The gentle, humane, 15 minute evaluation process takes specialized training to implement effectively. The method was developed over two decades of hands-on animal shelter work and dog behavior analysis, including experience in making decisions on safety, adoptability and euthanasia, matching dogs with new families, and surveying owners after "returns" for aggression in the new home.

The test has been honed and polished since 1993 at Rondout Valley Animals for Adoption, Accord, NY; every exercise in the test, every nuance, has a purpose developed by hundreds of video taped hours of evaluating dogs, completing adoptions, and following up over the course of years.

 

"By evaluating each dog's temperament, we can make sound decisions for placement, quality of life, and euthanasia.  (...)  The temperament of each dog, rather than length-of-stay, age, or breed, should be the guiding force behind sheltering and decisions such as euthanasia and placement. (...) Temperament testing allows you to describe the dog's personality and temperament to prospective adopters to help them select a match based on something more than looks. (from Great Dog Adoptions: A Guide for Shelters, by Sue Sternberg)

 

If you are interested in adopting or have already fallen in love with a dog from a shelter and would like to have him or her evaluated, please call or email us to make an appointment.  Please call HeRo if you would like more information.

 

 

For information or help on choosing a pet from a shelter please download the questionnaire here. 

 

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