Professional Training

The ASPCA’s SAFER® is a tool for assessing the probability of future canine aggression. Obtaining SAFER™ training helps ensure you are conducting and scoring assessment items correctly and that you are using SAFER™ scores appropriately to make sound decisions about the dogs you assess.

A research-based assessment of a cat’s behaviour and interests that matches adopter preferences with an animal’s behaviour. And the amazing part is that it works —shelters testing the ASPCA’s Meet Your Match® Program (Feline-ality™ is a part of Meet Your Match®) found a 40- to 45-percent increase in adoptions and a 45- to 50-percent decrease in returns and euthanasia. Incredible results and stats-driven!

The Meet Your Match (MYM)® Canine-ality™ Adoption Program is a new colour coding method for matching shelter dogs, ages six months and older, with adopters. This program is making it possible for adopters to know a little about a dog’s behaviour before deciding to make him a part of their family. Finding the perfect pooch is a serious undertaking. That is why the Ontario SPCA offers the MYM® program—to help match the colours of an adopter’s personality to their new friend’s Canine-ality™.

This course is designed for staff responsible for conducting Intake Exams, as well as those wishing to further their knowledge in this area. It will provide you with a well-rounded skill set and ability to perform Intake Exams for shelter animals, a key component in managing animal health in the shelter environment. This training is geared specifically to the procedures and protocols performed for the Intake Exam, including safe, low-stress animal handling.

This course will teach you specific and focused best practices you can use to provide for the behavioural needs of the dogs in your care. You will leave with a comprehensive understanding of canine body language, low-stress animal handling, and steps to evaluate your facility for environmental stressors that affect behaviour. You will learn to recognize specific canine behaviours, what they signify (e.g. stress, frustration), as well as safe and professional handling skills.  You will be shown various methods of restraint to prevent staff injuries and to reduce fear, anxiety, and stress. Also, an introduction to Fear Free practices, reward-based training methods, canine behaviour assessments, and tracking daily behavioural information from Intake to Adoption. This course includes hands-on practice of equipment use, tricks of the trade, and live demonstrations.

This course will teach you specific and focused best practices you can use to provide for the behavioural needs of the cats in your care. You will leave with a comprehensive understanding of feline body language, low-stress animal handling, and steps to evaluate your facility for environmental stressors that affect behaviour. You will learn to recognize specific feline behaviours, what they signify (e.g. pain, fear), as well as safe and professional handling skills. We will discuss the impact of fear, anxiety, and stress on feline health and wellness and of length of stay. You will also learn the Feline Spectrum Assessment (FSA) a fast, simple procedure that grew out of the ASPCA’s “Is This Cat Feral” research that helps shelters know more about cats who enter with unknown histories. You will be introduced to Fear Free practices, reward-based training methods, and tracking daily behavioural information from Intake to Adoption. This course includes hands-on practice of equipment use, tricks of the trade, and live demonstrations.

The Infection Control and Zoonosis Workshop will enable you to create and maintain a healthy shelter environment for both animals and humans. Preventing and controlling infectious disease is an integral part of humane animal care. This audience participation and interactive workshop will tackle the basic principles of disease transmission and zoonotic diseases. We will review biosecurity precautions for staff and volunteers, cleaning and disinfection protocols and meeting Health and Safety Standards.

This course has been designed to be a resource for guiding frontline staff in how to deal with inquiries from the public about community cats and how we can better manage any of these cats that do end up in our centres. A portion of the course will cover topics such as how to determine between feral and frightened, how to best handle and house feral cats in your centre and how to best support our feral cat caretakers out there in the community. We will also go over Neighbourhood Cats’ TNR Handbook and best practices for managing a feral cat colony, including hands-on demonstrations on how to use different live traps.

Do you or your staff need a one-day focused review of all things “Safety”?
This full-day course curriculum will introduce several key aspects of Human Resources safety elements including WHMIS updates, WSIB, and safety incident reporting. The course emphasizes key components of working safely in the shelter environment, including Bio-security and zoonosis, sharps handling, and use of cleaning and disinfecting agents. The afternoon will provide hands-on safe animal handling techniques for real shelter situations. Guidance will also be provided for specific questions you may have regarding on the job safety and resolution of health and safety concerns.