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Happy Handling - When Resilience Conditioning Creates Cooperation

Happy Handling for Shelter Dogs

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Do some dogs in your shelter stare at you with hard eyes and bared teeth when you approach them with medication? Do you struggle to administer necessary medical care to extremely stressed shelter dogs? Caring for the sick and injured in a shelter can be hard and sometimes dangerous!

Fear not! Low-stress handling and cooperative care is possible in a shelter environment. There’s a better way for you and your charges, and we want to give you new tools for approaching these problems. What does a Resilience Conditioning training plan based around the Resilience Rainbow look like? What are the advantages of this approach? We will explore these concepts and exercises through case examples.

Meet the instructor

Evia Russell, CDBC

Evia Russell, CDBC, graduated from Carleton College in 2014 with a B.A. in Animal Behavior. While in school, she researched the communication differences between New World monkeys and humans, using a captive troop of cotton-top tamarins as subjects.

After college, Evia moved to Austin, Texas where she began her career in the largest no-kill animal shelter in the country. She transitioned into a job in veterinary medicine as a technician, becoming lead technician within three years. In September of 2017, she followed her heart to Colorado where she accepted a position with Behavior Vets. She has trained with Debbie Martin, CVT-VTS (Behavior) to offer behavior treatment to support our patients, and is a Fear FreeTM Certified Veterinary Professional. She is also certified as a dog behavior consultant through the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants.

Evia shares her home with eight cats – only three of which she claims are hers. Outside of oversharing pictures of said cats, she enjoys downhill mountain biking and taking her motorcycle on adventures.

Patrick Jones - Course author

Meet the instructor

Ferdie Yau, MA, CPDT-KA

Ferdie Yau is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer and Behavior Consultant who started his training career at the Central Park Zoo in 2002. Ferdie has been training dogs and educating their humans in NYC, the Bronx, and Inwood since 2007, and founded Sits & Wiggles Dog Training in 2009.

He is a strong advocate for improving animal welfare and providing free or low-cost training services for under-served communities through his work at the Humane Society of Westchester and the Community Pets Program, a compassionate outreach initiative of Animal Care Centers of NYC. Ferdie has an MA in Conservation Biology from Columbia University (2007) and a BS in Natural Resource Ecology and Management from the University of Michigan (1998).

Patrick Jones - Course author