Today Care for Dogs were delighted to welcome children & teachers from Anubahn School in a “Field Trip” outing as part of their inclusion in the Professor Paws program.

Volunteers prepared themselves with 4 stations of interest for the 4 groups of children in and around the shelter, meeting and greeting dogs, handling puppies and grooming and some basic dog behaviour training with Nienke form LuckyDogs Boarding and Training Center.

Nienke introduced the children to the concept of positive reinforcement, highlighting this to be more effective and dog friendly than punishment, then demonstrating a dog training technique using a “clicker” and finally helping the children to understand the basic needs of exercise and walking the dogs on a lead without pulling, volunteers Paul and Not assisted with accompanying the groups walking through a nearby orchard.

Sarah held children’s attention amongst some very relaxed dogs, giving an excellent class about how to approach dogs, demonstrating dog behavior and asking the children to talk about their experiences with dogs.

Gill & Irene along with some dirty dogs, stood in the shower area and talked and demonstrated how to was a dog. Thankfully the dirty dogs were hot candidates for the task and Gill showed how easy it is to shower and brush a dog. After initial fears of either getting wet or hurting the dog, some of the children reveled in the activity.

In the shelter enclosure E2, Teresa and Mariel held sessions with their groups sat amongst the puppies demonstrating preferred lifting and holding techniques along with encouraging the children to actually touch the dogs. Amazingly, so few of the children actually admitted to having dogs in their own homes.

The visit to the shelter went very well in everyones opinion and after volunteers Soraya and Jenny had made sure that all the children had completed their trip report booklets, it was time for their teacher Robby, to take the children back to school.

You can view more photo’s of the school visit here …