It's tough to communicate to a dog (or for that matter a cat), if you only 'do this,' your odds will be far greater of being adopted. Shelters are stressful places to be, and some may be there for stressful reasons in the first place (family abandons them, owner dies, etc).
This is story of a dog named Baxter, and how trainers at the Anti Cruelty Society of Chicago softened his bark. Call this a finishing school for a bark-o-holic:
Hey there--LONG time no talk!! And thanks for the kind words! We have to catch up...when I'm not buried in homework!
Peggy
Oops...I commented on the wrong blog post. I hope you find this!
This entry is featured on today's "Hot on ChicagoNow:"
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/hot-on-chicagonow/2010/05/hot-on-chicagonow-may-5-2010.html
Steve, you should write about how some shelters/rescues will spend THOUSANDS on one dogs medical issues, but they won't spend anything on behavioral and will EUTHANIZE a dog for minior aggression to dogs.
I think it's great to make shelter dogs more adoptable, we have a program where we work with dogs who are scheduled to be euthanized (usually for dog-aggression or some minor aggression issues) and we rehabilitate and train them. http://www.dynamicdogschicago.com I wish more shelters would set aside money to do behavior modification and training! Non-for-profit "NO KILL" shelters publishes the list of dogs they euthanized, broken down to behavioral and medical. But I would question what the "behavioral" consisted of. Evaluating a dog in a stressful shelter environment is not always fair. I know training can make a huge difference in a dogs life.