Bonding Moments
Pawsitive Works is making a measurable difference in the lives of at risk youth.
Your donation can help change lives – youth and dogs!
Are you interested in starting a program where you live? Contact Us.
Our program provides at risk youth with behavior skills that are linked to increased school attendance, improved community relations and decreased problem behaviors. The program increases self-concept and mindfulness and positively affects empathy through the care and training of homeless behaviorally challenged dogs.
Pawsitive Works has implemented the program into several communities and measures the effectiveness through rubrics, pre/post tests, and statistics provided by juvenile agencies and schools and is collaborating with The Peabody Research Institute and Dr. Greg Duncan at the University of Washington to further our research and outcomes needed to support continued and increased use of animal assisted interventions.
Over the past three years 98% of the youth are successful in staying out of trouble during the program. Similarly, over 95% of the dogs in our program are adopted!
Our classes are curriculum driven and include daily life lessons that link the dog training to skills youth can apply directly to their own lives. A good example of this is the lesson for dogs on waiting at doors. We correlate this lesson to a bridge lesson of patience and delayed gratification for our youth.
Youth have reading and writing homework to help them better understand the dog training and life skills we teach. Our team of volunteers and our trainer spend time at the beginning and end of each class reviewing homework and discussing lessons.
The small class sizes (4 – 6 youth) allow us to provide a mentoring environment. Youth work closely with volunteers and our instructor three times a week for five weeks.
Many shelters lack the staff and/or funding to provide training and/or enrichment programs to the dogs housed. The training, love and attention the dogs receive who are in the program is beneficial. Pawsitive Works helps these overlooked and harder to adopt dogs become more adoptable, to highlight them in media efforts and to bring awareness of their needs to the general community.
We celebrate the completion of each program session with a graduation ceremony. We love watching the youth “hand over” their training dogs to new owners.
Truly amazing… heartwarming and life changing… Pawsitive Works!
Volunteers make this possible. Help us make a difference in shaping both ends of the leash. The Volunteer page has all the information you need to get started.
