Hi {{first_name}} ,

I want to talk about something that has been close to my heart for longer than my professional career as a dog trainer.

Animal shelters.

Not the feel-good version. The real version. The part that is genuinely dangerous, for volunteers, for employees, and for the good dogs dying in those shelters because we are so focused on saving the wrong ones.

This Issue's Insights:

Reading time: 5 minutes

A friend of mine works at an animal shelter. I know her. I know her friends. I know her well.

There was a dog at her shelter, a Presa Canario, that had already bitten someone. He was housed in a separate wing specifically for dogs with bite history. The notes on his file said he was dangerous.

A rescue organization was fighting to pull this dog. Knowing full well he had bitten someone. Pushing and pushing and pushing.

In California there is something called the Hayden Act. I have used it myself. It allows dogs to exit shelters in certain circumstances. They were about to pull this dog when my friend went to the back to get him.

She is a skilled handler. Nobody is going to tell you otherwise. She has handled dogs that most professional trainers would not walk up to. She went in to get the dog and he turned on her. He bit her so many times and so hard that she thought she was going to die. She was in a section of the shelter where nobody could hear her screaming.

She found a brick and beat him off of herself with it.

If a dog is so violent that it takes that kind of force to stop an attack on a skilled handler, that dog should not have been in that shelter. He should not have been there that day. He should have been gone long before she walked through that door.

They found her in a pool of her own blood. She could not stand on her own.

That dog was then killed. Which should have happened long before any of this.

I used to say the same things the no-kill movement says. About 15 to 18 years ago. I believed them.

I was wrong.

There are large animal rights organizations in this country, I will not name them, you can do the research, that take in tens of millions of dollars every year. They run commercials showing sad dogs in kennels. They ask you for $10 or $20 a month. They send you a jacket.

That money is not going to the dog you saw on the screen.

And those same organizations go to large municipal shelters, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and offer grants. Tens of thousands of dollars. Conditional on one thing: kill fewer dogs on paper than you killed last year.

The theory sounds reasonable. Shelters should try to save more dogs. I do not deny that. But those same organizations refuse to support the use of prong collars, e-collars, or corrections in shelters. They don’t put their money where their mouths are…  The don’t focus as strongly on spay / neuter…  They focus on the sexy part of rescue…  

So they are telling shelters to house and train and care for increasingly difficult dogs, and then removing the tools that would allow them to do it or the tools that would prevent them from landing there in the first place.

We will never be fully no-kill. I am going to say that directly. Large municipal shelters will always have to make hard decisions about dogs that should not be in society. And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can focus on saving the dogs that deserve to get out.

I have talked about this before and I will keep saying it.

If I take a dog that requires 20% of my effort to manage, train, and work with, that frees up 80% of my capacity for other dogs.

If I take a dog that requires 100% of my effort, I cannot help another dog. And inevitably, that dog is going to bite someone or another dog. I am going to have a problem. I am going to have to put the dog down anyway. And while I was spending all that time and energy on one dog, four other good dogs died in that shelter because nobody had the capacity to get to them.

Nothing upsets me more than good dogs dying in shelters. Dogs that have not bitten anyone. Dogs that have not bitten other dogs. Dogs that just needed someone to get to them.

That is what the hero mentality is costing us. The focus on saving the most difficult dogs, the ones that require everything, is leaving good dogs behind.

I have said this for years.

Every shelter should have a veterinarian on staff. And a dog trainer on staff. Not a behaviorist. Not someone with initials behind their name who has never worked in a shelter environment. A dog trainer who has been on actual shelter floors and knows what these dogs look like.

That person could evaluate dogs, work with them, and make clear-eyed decisions: this dog is showing no ability to move beyond where he is. This dog, through training, has a real path forward. That distinction saves more dogs than any grant from any national organization.

My shelter dog training course is filmed entirely in a shelter with actual shelter dogs. Not trained demo dogs. Not pets brought in for the lesson. Real dogs in real kennels going through real evaluation and real training. As far as I know it is the only course of its kind. If I am wrong, correct me. But I have looked and I have not found another one.

The link is at robertcabral.com if you want to learn how to do this work properly.

Volunteering at a shelter matters. Walking dogs matters. But the thing that gets dogs out is not enrichment alone, though enrichment is important and necessary. It is training. Real skills. Dogs that can be presented to potential adopters and actually show well.

Enrichment makes a dog's life better inside the shelter. Training gets the dog out of the shelter. Both matter. The second one saves lives.

If you work in a shelter or volunteer at one and you want to learn how to do this work, the course is there. If you just want to help, get to a shelter near you and walk a dog. There is someone there like all of my friends at the West LA shelter doing extraordinary work every day for dogs who have nobody else.

If you've ever corrected your dog and immediately wondered whether you did it right, this is for you.

Not the person looking for shortcuts. The person who genuinely wants to communicate better with their dog and is not sure corrections are helping or hurting.

I've been building a Corrections Masterclass around that exact question. When corrections work, when they don't, and what has to be in place before they do anything useful.

Subscribers get first access when it opens.

1. Watch the work, not the highlight reel

The Dog Training Videos on my YouTube channel shows full sessions, not edits. Dogs that don't cooperate. Sessions that don't go smoothly. Real training, start to finish. That's the playlist that will actually teach you something. 

[DOG-TRAINING VIDEOS]

2.  Ask me directly

Every week inside my online membership I run a member Q&A. Members post questions, I answer them on camera. If you want to see how training really works, the stumbling blocks, the adjustments, the resolution, that's where it lives. [MEMBERSHIP]

3. The Decision Matrix - FREE: If you don’t already have it, and if you're not sure when to correct and when to redirect, that confusion is costing you every session. I put together a free guide that walks you through exactly how to make that call.