ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

The Liberal Animal Shelter has been working extremely hard in recent months to help its furry charges find new homes and soon, a new program will start aimed at helping with that.

The shelter’s new Tails Around Town program, which will begin April 1, will give citizens who may not be able to have a pet of their own the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of pet friendship while also doing something wonderful for a shelter dog.

Liberal Animal Shelter Director Tara Logan said the idea for the program came about from the citizens themselves.

“Tails Around Town was started because we had a lot of citizens asking about fostering dogs. And since we are a small shelter with minimal, fostering is not really an option for us right now,” Logan said. “Fostering is a really entailed program and has a lot of criteria we simply aren’t able to meet right now,  so what I came up with was a program that will still get the community to help, but it's not as entailed or stringent as being a foster.”

With Tails Around Town, participants can take a shelter dog out for up to four hours to enjoy some time outside the shelter, with potential outings including car rides, trips to a park or other local places within city limits. Overall, Logan said, the program is pretty straightforward.

“The dog comes with a harness and a leash and a seat belt, and they have to be with leash at all times, and participants have to be 18 years old,” Logan said. “However, you can't take them into your home and meet your pets. The goal of this program is to give our dogs a break from the shelter environment with other dogs and other animals. This is to help encourage one-on-one interaction with humans and socialization. We don't want them meeting other dogs like it’s a play date, we can do play dates in the play yard at the shelter. This is more for human interaction to let the dog de-stress. This program is great for the dogs because it’s time away from the shelter, which can help reduce stress and anxiety caused by kennel living. It also gives the dogs mental stimulation, socialization, and a chance to show off their personality in a real-world setting. This is also great for the participants because spending time with a dog can reduce stress, encourage them to get outside, boost your overall mood, and of course get plenty of dog kisses and tail wags.”

The desire for more community support, Logan said, was a big factor in starting the program.

“We always want community participation with the shelter. And while a foster program right now isn't feasible for us, we still wanted the citizens that would like to help to be able to help,” Logan said. “So this is a much more feasible way to get community participation without the strong commitment of fostering or adoption, because we know not everyone is in a position to do that at the moment.”

Logan said she is excited to see the program get going.

“This will help us get our longer-term guests out of the facility. A lot of times the long term ones are the Pit Bulls, the German Shepherds, the Huskies. You rarely have a smaller breed that’s around long term, they typically just don't stay that long. But those bigger breeds generally stay longer, and this gives us an opportunity for them to get out and decompress out of the shelter. Ultimately, our goal is what's best for the dogs. All the dogs that go out will already be spayed, neutered, microchipped, and up to date on their vaccines. If a dog comes in and isn't spayed or neutered, that dog won't be available to go out around town program until we can get that dog altered and up to date on all the vaccines.”

Logan offered encouragement for people in the community to consider participating.

“If this sounds like something you would enjoy dealing with your family or even on your own, just you and the dog for a couple hours in an afternoon, get in touch with the shelter and we’ll get you started,” Logan said. “We have a couple forms that need filled out and we have a manual we’ll e-mail out so you can familiarize yourself with  it. You complete the forms, send them back, and then we can get you scheduled. It's up to four hours right now, and Thursday, Saturday and Sunday are the days that you can do it. Eventually, we'd like to increase how many days we do it, but those are the days we’re starting with until we get our footing underneath us. And there are no fees to participate, you just fill out the paperwork and I'll do a quick check make sure you don't have you haven't been charged with animal cruelty or any violent crimes, and then, as long as that's clear, we’ll get you scheduled.”

The shelter announced the program last week, and Logan said she has already seen a big response.

“People are excited to see a program like this, and our announcements on social media really took off,” Logan said. “I think we’ll see a lot of participation especially during the summer months when the kids are out of school. Generally, families have a little more time to spend together in the summer, so maybe their plans will include coming to get a dog on a Sunday as part of their activity by taking it to the park, having a family picnic and then bringing the dog back afterward.”

One of the ripple effects of the program Logan said she hopes to see is an increase in adoptions.

“I would love to see multiple instances of someone getting a dog, taking it out for the afternoon, absolutely falling in love with it, and then before you know it, it's part of their family – that would be great,” Logan said. “However, if nothing else, it gets the dog exposure to other people who might be interested in adoption, and if that happens, they can get in touch with us at the shelter and we’ll be happy to get that process started.”