Dogs Playing for Life!

 Have you ever imagined what it must be like for a dog to end up in a hectic shelter?

For many such dogs, they know that their family is lost to them but they do not understand why. Imagine not being able to ask what is going to happen next or to tell someone that you feel alone and abandoned.

We have served hundreds of thousands of dogs in shelters through our playgroup seminars and enrichment programs. By helping shelters improve the quality of life for their dogs, more dogs will be adopted and fewer will fall through the cracks.

By investing in canine enrichment through behavioral intervention, Dogs Playing for Life is committed to tackling the “end game” of animal welfare by attending to the emotional well-being of all sheltered dogs from the day they arrive until the day they go home.

Our programs are featured at international animal welfare conferences and implemented by shelters nationwide. The verdict is simple: it works.

As we continue to improve lifesaving for homeless or abandoned dogs, some are being left behind because they need more behavior support and training. These dogs may not be candidates for playgroups for any number of reasons, which leaves them with far less enrichment opportunities, often leading to even worse behavior issues. We’ve learned that providing additional handling and training skills for shelter teams to assess and address these challenges early, greatly increases this group of dogs' chances of finding a new home.  But reaching all of the shelters and their teams onsite is a long, slow process.

The Covid pandemic taught us that we can successfully provide our training via live webinars.  With our Playgroup Enrichment programming completed, we are moving toward developing the added training opportunities shelter teams need to better support a more diverse group of dogs through their journey to a new home.  By investing in expanded canine enrichment opportunities, and extended training to improve shetler staff’s ability to provide a level of behavioral intervention, Dogs Playing for Life will continue to improve the quality of life for dogs while in the shelter helping them get adopted faster.  

But the work doesn’t stop there.  There is yet another level of support needed by both the dogs and the shelters that serve them.  For those canines who’s behavior challenges require advanced intervention, we’ve launched our first Canine Center facility in Florida for advanced training and behavior.

Canine Center Florida

Canine Center, Florida (CCF) is our first advanced training and behavior facility for unowned dogs that are suffering behaviorally. We review their histories and then professionally assess each individual dog to determine the best course of action for a positive outcome, whenever possible.

Transporting dogs from adoption centers to Canine Center Florida relieves a burden on shelter staff and infrastructure, enabling them to serve their remaining dogs more efficiently. By providing this advanced training resource we are effectively ‘completing the cycle’ of canine programming within the animal sheltering community so that we can achieve maximum lifesaving together.

With demand for access to Canine Center Florida sky high, our goal is to open these facilities across the country to prevent dogs from needing to be transported long distances to access our specialized resources.   

We provide lifetime support to our program graduates through adoption follow-up services. That includes our lifetime promise: Dogs Playing for Life will take back any dog that is not successful in their new home, for any reason.