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This past Saturday more than thirty yogi's and their pups laid their mats out on the grass in Rose Park and particpated in a yoga class led by Tranquil Space Yoga's Kimberly Wilson, to benefit WHS.
Doggie Style Bakery sponsored the lavish bark bar and WHS's Mobile Adoption Center was on hand with animals for adoption!
Please Click here to see when our WHS Mobile Adoption Center is coming to a neighborhood near you with animals for adoption!
Washington Humane Society Behavior & Learning Center is now open for Consultations and Classes for Cats and Dogs and the People who Love Them!
The Washington Humane Society’s new Behavior &Learning Center is dedicated to providing people and their animals the tools they need to succeed in lasting, successful relationships. Our Behavior Consultants and experienced Trainers practice humane, motivational methods of training offered through private counseling, group classes, and behavioral workshops.
Summer in the nation’s capital is scorching hot! The inside of a car can heat up to 110° F within 3 to 5 minutes on an 80° F day, and summer’s in DC have average temperatures in the 90’s. Causing an animal to be subjected to unnecessary cruelty and/or suffering is illegal and punishable by law in DC.
What to do if you see an animal locked in a hot car:
If the animal is already in distress call 911 immediately, if the animal seems okay for the moment then do the following:
Animals suffering from heat stroke can develop permanent damage and time to help them before its too late is short!
Expresso,a stray 8-month-old black mix was brought the Washington Humane Society. After holding Espresso for five days to ensure her owners weren’t looking for her, Espresso was made available for adoption.
When Espresso first came into our care, we could see right away that she was a very active and intelligent – and would need a great deal of mental and physical stimulation. She was enrolled in our SIT (Shelter In-house Training) program to harness her exuberance and to prevent her from deteriorating within the shelter environment.
Espresso quickly learned to walk politely on a Gentle Leader Collar™, and she had a solid sit and stay position. Many staff and volunteer trainers worked with Espresso to help enrich her kennel experience and give her the tools to lead a fulfilling life in her future home. This program is designed as a first step toward the training that her owner would continue in order for the dog to become a happy, healthy member of her new family.
After ninety-six days in our care, Espresso found a new home where she would be able to receive all the physical and mental stimulation that her temperament requires. Without the countless hours of dedicated service from volunteers Julie Stack, Mary Farran, Washington Humane Society staff Clinton Corley and Paul Andrews, as well as many other volunteers and staff, Espresso would certainly not have progressed with such large leaps and bounds.
Espresso’s enrichment program was not especially unique; many dogs who are good candidates for behavior rehabilitation are placed into the SIT program. Some dogs also have an individual behavior plan based on their specific behavioral needs, such as hand feeding for resource guarding, leash training for dogs who pull on the leash, crate training for small dogs or dogs with separation issues, agility training for active dogs, and advanced obedience training for those dogs that would benefit from extra mental stimulation.
Through the hard work of the staff and volunteers at the Washington Humane Society, Espresso was placed in a home where she is now an active, cherished and loving member of her family.
If you would like to volunteer for the Washington Humane Society as a SIT Trainer, please contact Director of Animal Behavior and Training, Kevin Simpson, 202-723-5730 (ext. 149) ksimpson@washhumane.org
By: Bridget Speiser, CatNiPP Program Manager
It was June 1974, and I had just celebrated my 4th birthday. My baby brother was about to turn a year old. It was a sticky summer morning and my mother, brother and I were wrapping up a morning of shopping at the neighborhood Kroger grocery store. My mother was focused on getting kids and parcels back to the car and I kept wandering off; I had my eye on a mama cat and her kittens that were foraging in the dumpster.
I remember that morning like it was yesterday. And nearly 34 years later, I am still keeping an eye on the cats and kittens living on the fringes of our neighborhoods. Stray and feral cats are the product of human mistreatment – owned cats are too often abandoned and those that are not neutered produce litters of untamable kittens. Unaddressed, the process continues and seems unstoppable. Trapping and removing the cats doesn’t work – those left behind continue to breed and the removed cats are often not social enough to be considered for adoption, so shelters across America are faced with euthanizing them.
On October 6, 2006, the Washington Humane Society (WHS) officially launched CatNiPP – the Cat Neighborhood Partnership Program; a program designed to tackle the District’s feral cat overpopulation problem and improve the lives of the thousands of stray and feral cats that call our neighborhood streets home. Through CatNiPP, WHS has created a network that works to humanely trap feral cats, spay or neuter them at the Society’s National Capital Area Spay & Neuter Center to curb the cycle of breeding, vaccinate them to provide protection against Rabies and return the healthy and safely tagged cats back to their outdoor homes, where they are cared for by dedicated community caregivers, all for free.
CatNiPP is much more than surgery and vaccines, however. The program focuses on overall spay/neuter education and encompasses programs designed to keep cats indoors and in homes – where they belong. By moving through the communities at a grassroots level and demonstrating compassion for animals otherwise overlooked and thought to be “worthless,” CatNiPP teaches communities about compassion and the responsibility of pet ownership and good stewardship. CatNiPP is a tangible demonstration of the power of community action and is a real way to spread the message of spay/neuter and compassionate care for all neighborhood animals.
Most significantly, all of the cats who are a part of CatNiPP are being lovingly cared for by neighborhood caregivers who monitor them regularly and have often cared for them for years. Once the cats are spayed/neutered and vaccinated they are not “returned” to a life of abandonment and struggle. They are brought back to the neighborhood by the person who serves as their caregiver.
The health and wellbeing of the cats is monitored closely and the caregivers are encouraged to report the slightest sign of illness or injury. Rather than subsisting on the scraps of dumpsters and trash cans, these cats are fed nutritious diets and all caregivers work with us to construct simple shelters to shield their colony from the elements. The vast majority of the cats have names and are loved by their caregivers – and having talked personally with many of these folks, I know they care deeply about these cats as valuable individuals.
That cat family that I witnessed 34 years ago still inspires me today. Neighbor helping neighbor, together we can make a difference.
Looking to expand your social network and make new friends? Meeting new like-minded people has never been easier, with the launch of the dog friendly “Frisky Business Happy Hour” Washington’s first social networking event dedicated to pet owners.
Jointly hosted by Helix Lounge, the Washington Humane Society (WHS) and AnimalAttraction.com, the happy hour’s take place every Wednesday through September kicking off THIS Wednesday, July 23rd from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Helix Lounge’s outdoor patio.
Recognizing that pet owners are their own special breed, the happy hour aims to connect like-minded people through their four-legged friends. The “Frisky Business Happy Hour” is a new twist on Helix Lounge’s popular summer doggie happy hour, during which Washingtonians and their pooches enjoy specialty cocktails and appetizers on the lounge’s outdoor patio to benefit WHS.
4th annual Doga in the Park
(Yoga with your four legged friend, hosted by tranquil space yoga and Kimberly Wilson)
Saturday, July 19th
10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Rose Park (
Bring your yoga mat and your canine yogi (bring your own, borrow one, or come alone) for an afternoon of yoga in the park, just steps away from the tranquil space studio. The Washington Humane Society is teaming with the tranquil space studio and Doggie Style Bakery to bring an afternoon of fun, focused around your four-legged friend. WHS's Mobile Adoption Center will also be on hand with animals available for adoption!
Kimberly Wilson, of tranquil space studio, will lead puppy parents and friends through a complimentary yoga practice in the park. Treats will be provided to humans AND canines, compliments of tranquil space, the Washington Humane Society, and Doggie Style Bakery!
Weather permitting: we will reschedule our canine celebration if it rains. $5 donation requested for WHS. Additional donations for the Washington Humane Society can be made here. No pre-registration required. Just drop by!
Last year just after I was finishing up a private behavioral consultation with a client and her dog, I found myself facing a dilemma that I’ve encountered time and time again. This client, like many others we’ve worked with, originally sought help from us with a problem commonly referred to as leash aggression. Leash aggression is a loosely used term to describe that embarrassing moment when your dog lunges and snarls at another dog while walking on leash.There are many motivators for a dog to act out in this manner. Most respond readily to intervention, but others can be quite tricky to rehabilitate. Nonetheless, there I was with this client contemplating how I was going to tell her that we could no longer help. She and her dog were making great progress and had learned all they needed from the one-on-one consultations.Her timing and handling skills were becoming impeccably sharp and in order for them to continue progressing, they now needed the benefits of group classes.Group classes would provide them with not only more affordable training and socialization for less cost than private lessons, but more importantly it would give them ample opportunity to practice their new-found skills around other dogs. After all, if you are going to address a problem like leash aggression you need to work around other dogs, not avoid them.And, as a team, they were both ready for the challenge.So my problem was, quite simply, that I did not know where to refer them. Group classes specializing in “dog reactive dogs” are very limited in the DC area, and due to a lack of an indoor training arena, at the time we were also unable to provide any assistance. The good news was that this client and her dog had undergone a dramatic change. She could now walk her dog in public places with confidence. Change had a domino affect that rippled throughout their entire life.Together they now enjoyed longer, more frequent walks, and longer walks meant more meaningful exercise. More meaningful exercise meant better rest, which in turn produced a better behaved dog and so on.Domino effects seem to be a common occurrence with “change”. We witnessed it with the grand opening of our National Capital Area Spay & Neuter Centerlast October. With the move of our Spay/Neuter Clinic to the new state-of-the-art facility on 1001 L Street in Southeast, we had a vacancy on the main floor of our old Spay/Neuter Clinic on Georgia Avenue in Northwest. It’s funny how long it can take to construct a building, but only a day to tear it down.Well, we didn’t exactly tear down the old Clinic, but with the amazing work of Rand Construction Corp., we did remove the dividing walls of the old surgical suites to open up one, large, useable space, big enough to construct a training center that could hold group training classes. For the first time in the history of the Washington Humane Society’s 137 year mission to serve and protect the animals in DC, we now have our own indoor venue to hold behavior and learning classes for both the animals and people of the region. The new training center enables us to train adoptable dogs while they wait for their new homes, providing additional enrichment and emotional stability.As an in-house benefit we now have ample space to provide training for both our staff and volunteers on the philosophies of animal learning.And for our community we are offering competitively priced private and group classes. Group training classes, open to the public, provide education and training in subjects such as socialization, preparedness, general manners, specific obedience, cat and dog topics, clicker, AKC Canine Good Citizen, and will even address leash aggression.Like any new business we are starting out small until our roots grow strong enough to support a much larger venue. But, given the experience, drive, and dedication of our staff and volunteers, and the critical support of our donors, I fully expect the Washington Humane Society to one day become the premier leader in the animal behavior and training industry on the East Coast. The dominos are all just beginning to fall into place…. If you are interested in learning more about our new training facility or would like to sign up for classes, please visit http://www.washhumane.org/learningcenter.asp By: Kevin Simpson, Director of Animal Training and Behavior
The Washington Humane Society is committed to reuniting animals with their owners, and offers $35 microchipping to the public. The public is welcome to visit either of our two shelters or our National Capital Area Spay & Neuter Center for this quick and painless $35 procedure to safeguard your pet. For locations and hours of operations, please visit: www.washhumane.org or call 202-723-5730.
Comcast Pets On Demand gives pet lovers throughout Maryland, Virginia and the District an opportunity to view 30 or more profiles of lovable cats and dogs available for adoption at the Washington Humane Society. Pet profiles can be accessed for free in the “Get Local” category of the ON DEMAND menu by selecting Pet Adoptions ON DEMAND.
Through Comcast’s Pet Adoptions ON DEMAND, viewers can watch a two to three minute, live-action video profile of animals up for adoption. In the profiles Washington Humane Society staff members Kelly Manion and Diana Foley interact with each animal and talk about its unique personality and ideal living environment. Each profile also has a specific identification code viewers can use to find out more information about the featured pet. Profiles are categorized by animal type and size and will be updated on a bi-monthly basis.
How to access Pet Adoptions ON DEMAND:
o Step one: Tune to Channel 1 on your Comcast Digital Cable or press the “ON DEMAND” button on your remote control
o Step two: Select “Get Local” from the ON DEMAND menu
o Step three: Select “Pet Adoption”
o Step four: Select “Small Dogs”, “Large Dogs”, or “Cats”
o Step five: Watch video clips of a furry pet
o Step six: Contact the Washington Humane Society to adopt a pet!
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