Kennel to Couch - Lucky Dawg Daycare

Why Kennel to Couch?

3 to 4 million homeless animals are euthanized every year. Shelters and rescue groups work tirelessly to find animals lasting, forever homes but their resources are limited and already stretched thin. So, in spite of their amazing efforts every year, countless animals are adopted and returned for common and fixable behavior problems that confuse and frustrate adopters.

Animal returns create very serious problems for the animals and the shelters trying to save them. Regardless of how nice a shelter may be, it will always be an intensely stressful environment to inhabit. When an animal leaves and returns, their stress-level and behavior problems often intensify. As animals return and remain in shelters, their overall well being diminishes while the cost of caring for them adds up with each passing day. And the tragic truth is, many of these animals never make it out of shelters alive. To learn more about this problem and see Keebler’s story, check out our official trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aklcS3Qo1U

So we created Kennel to Couch to provide shelters and adopters the additional behavior and training support that might make the difference between an animal staying in a home forever and meeting a tragic demise.

What is Kennel to Couch?

Kennel to Couch is a behavior and training web series designed to educate adopters in an entertaining way about the nature of commonly encountered behavior problems and how to fix them. Most importantly, it will be available to stream online, so it’s a resource readily available for adopters whenever they’re feeling frustrated and confused.

We understand that many families don’t always have a lot of extra time and money, so Kennel to Couch offers realistic solutions to cater to the everyday adopter.

This web series uses reward-based training, and stresses the importance of forming a positive relationship between adopter and new dog. We do not advocate any aversive techniques involving pain or fear, as this can be detrimental to a new relationship and cause additional stress for the dog. We feel this is crucial, especially when working with shelter dogs, so the series as a whole works to positively ease both adopter and dog through the tumultuous transition from “kennel to couch”.

After we’ve launched Season One, which covers dog basics, we plan to continue on with additional seasons for cats, puppies, and advanced dog behavior and training topics. But this is the first step!

Season One topics are broken down into 12 episodes, covering the most common reasons dogs are frequently returned to shelters:

Episode 1: A Positive Approach

Brad

This episode is dedicated to Brad. His first adoption was unsuccessful because the adopter, not knowing about reward-based training, used punishment, involving fear. This resulted in Brad becoming fearful and led to his return. This episode will cover the importance of using rewards and the pitfalls of aversive techniques involving pain and fear.