🐾 Hello. Woof. Wag. Sniff. Welcome.🐾
In a recent survey of animal shelters that provide K9 Nose Work® as an enrichment program for their in-house sheltered dogs, a total of 26 shelters responded with information. (A huge wag of the tail to these 26 respondents for helping to kick-off this research.) Of these 26 shelters, 62% reported that K9 Nose Work increased the adoptability rate of the participating dogs. But that’s not all. When asked to weigh the increase of adoptability for the participating dogs on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being extremely more adoptable, 88% of the respondents weighed the adoptability rate with either a 4 or a 5.
This is great news for shelters. But it’s even better news for the thousands of dogs waiting, pacing, barking and longing for their forever home.
* K9 Nose Work is a registered trademark of the National Association of Canine Scent Work.
Happy Sniffing Research, in partnership with the National Association of Canine Scent Work, is taking up the lead and the leash to implement a study for the purpose of sniffing out the data behind the adoptability rate of dogs that participate in K9 Nose Work within the animal shelter community. The proposed research plan is to supply a select group of shelters with tools and funding to provide K9 Nose Work within their shelter, while at the same time, monitoring a control group that will have all the same enrichment activities provided with the exception of K9 Nose Work. In this manner, each shelter will have a study group and a control group under their roof, so the research study will evaluate each shelter against itself. The study plan is for 5-6 shelters to participate over a period of 6 months and for each shelter to have the oversight and coaching of a Certified Nose Work Instructor (CNWI) available for Nose Work sessions.
Each shelter will receive funding and each CNWI will receive compensation for running the K9 Nose Work Program within the shelter. Dogs will be randomly selected for each study and control group, and when one dog is adopted (we hope this happens a lot), then another dog will be randomly selected to replace the adopted dog in both the study group and the control group. At the end of the study period, collected data will be compiled, analyzed and reported as a research publication available for public access.
This research, if it shows strong supporting evidence that K9 Nose Work Programs within shelters increase the adoptability rate of dogs, could help shelters gain valuable and much needed funding for the implementation of a K9 Nose Work enrichment program.
But it does so much more for the dogs. Alexandra Horowitz (a very well-known behavioral canine author and cognitive scientist) has published research findings that show that K9 Nose Work (the act of searching and finding) increases overall optimism for dogs. What does that mean? Quite simply, Nose Work dogs are happier dogs. And, from the observations of many hundreds of Nose Work enthusiasts, we have learned that it decreases stress, helps dogs to become more restful, and helps with environmental socialization. K9 Nose Work requires just a few cardboard boxes or plastic containers, some tasty treats or a toy, a small space, and just a couple of minutes per dog.
To provide the funding of an assistant kennel work and a CNWI for the shelters to be included in the study, we are seeking funding of 90k. Ninety percent of the funding will go to the shelters and CNWI to implement the study and collect the data. The research staff and board members who are involved in conducting this study are 100% volunteer. Two of the members of the research team have previously published a research study in Springer: Animal Cognition in the field of canine detection.
Woof. You can help to give shelter dogs a better quality of life within the shelter, and hopefully, a proven, greater opportunity for adoption. Again, we are an all-volunteer research team with just one goal: to help dogs lead better lives through the pure joy, beauty and science of the canine nose.
