Obedience For Adoptability

This class is geared towards volunteers who want to improve their own dog handling and training skills while simultaneously improving the quality of life and adoptability of long-term or special-needs shelter dogs. 

If you have not signed up to be a volunteer you must do that first.  You can find out how to become a volunteer here.

What is adoptability?  Adoptability in a shelter context describes how desirable an animal appears to a potential new family.  Some factors that determine adoptability cannot be changed: a dog’s size, age, breed, and history are all fixed characteristics that may influence an average adopter’s interest in (or aversion to) any given dog.  Other factors are changeable: a dog’s likeliness to jump up on a person, leash manners, or obedience repertoire.  It is these qualities or lack thereof which often keeps shelter dogs from finding homes as quickly as they maybe could.

The first goal of this class will be to teach staff-selected shelter dogs behaviors and manners that will make them not only more attractive to potential adopters, but to teach them skills that will help them be successful in their future homes.  Additionally for the dogs, the class itself and supplementary “homework” with their new trainers will provide them with much-needed time outside of their kennels and metal stimulation.

The second goal is to teach you, the volunteer, how to make your time working with the shelter dogs more effective: a well-trained volunteer can incorporate exercise, training, and life-skills into one half-hour training session!   

Your commitment is important!  We ask that all volunteers who want to participate in this class be able and willing to set aside time each week to go to class as well as allot enough time to work with their assigned dog at least twice a week between classes.  If you feel unable to commit to that much time but are interested learning more about training, there are other ways to learn; just ask!

Obedience for Adoptability classes are held on Thursday evenings from 5:30 to 6:30 pm, and the next series will run from July 23 through August 27. Please feel free to contact Lindsey at

 llieberman@buttehumane.org with any questions regarding the course, our dogs, or training in general!