Sometimes a pup needs a little bit of extra assistance to shine—showing potential adopters how special they are and helping them find their forever home. That special help will be available to our long-term dog guests thanks to the generosity of PEDIGREE Foundation. PAWS Atlanta is proud to announce that we are a recipient of a PEDIGREE Foundation 2022 grant award. Support from PEDIGREE Foundation will help us implement our exciting new “PAWS Long-term Guest Project,” a new training program for dogs that helps with socialization, training, and stress relief so they can move beyond behaviors that might hinder their adoption into loving, forever families.

The program will focus on dogs who have been with PAWS Atlanta over one year. It will include creating a tier-level assessment that will allow us to identify which dogs need to be in the training program and at what level of support. Trainers will work with each dog one-on-one to address behavioral challenges including aggression, reactivity, fearfulness, phobias, and separation anxiety, as well as everyday issues, from polite on- and off-leash manners to stopping destructive behavior. We will also create a certification component that will allow us to show potential adopters that the dog has completed the training. The goal of the program is to increase our adoption rate for harder-to-place dogs and/or dogs with longer-than-average length of stays. Our hope is that dogs who are trained will find a forever home more quickly (reducing their length of stay and return rate). And, when we place a long-term guest, it opens up space at our shelter for more dogs in need. It is a win-win!

We are so thankful to PEDIGREE Foundation for making this program possible for our organization!