Animal training can be operationalized as applying classical and operant conditioning techniques to influence the emotional state of an animal, or the behavior she exhibits, under a specific set of conditions (Domjan, 2014; Fernandez, 2022; Pierce & Cheney, 2017). Modern ethics- and evidence-based trainers take this definition a step further by using classical and operant techniques to condition positive emotional responses to stimuli that were previously aversive or neutral, and build, rather than suppress, behavior through positive reinforcement (Fernandez, 2024; Friedman, 2009; Milikan, 2012).
The uncomfortable truth is that classical and operant conditioning are phenomena that occur all the time, whether we are actively training an animal or not. And the shelter environment, unlike the modern animal trainer within its walls, is ethically indifferent. As shelter behavior professionals, we can choose to see this as a Sisyphean burden or a great opportunity. How can we use learning science to our advantage when the animal:trainer ratio might be 100:1, or worse?
It is incumbent on us to deploy effective, efficient, and ethical training interventions that meet the needs of each individual in our care. For many of the animals in a shelter, we are working towards a live placement outcome in an adoptive home, so it makes good sense to target scarce training time on building behaviors that will help an animal get noticed by an adopter. We already know that the Association of Shelter Veterinarians has come out strongly in favor of positive reinforcement-based training (DeTar et al., 2022), but what do you do when you are a single staff member and you cannot possibly conduct training sessions with each of the hundreds of animals in care? The answer is not to cut ethical corners, but to be smart about how we structure our time and delegate tasks. Making some tweaks to the animals’ environment is a good place to start.
Enter enrichment. Simply put, when we provide enrichment to a captive animal we are adjusting her environment in ways that can (i) increase opportunities for her to perform species-typical behaviors and (ii) produce a measurable, positive change in her welfare (Markowitz, 1978; Shepherdson, 1998). Sounds a lot like training, doesn’t it? In the shelter, we can use enrichment strategically to train desirable behaviors. By applying low-cost, no-fuss enrichment strategies (e.g., feeding a stressed dog in a cardboard box that she can rip up), and measuring behavior change over time, shelter workers can have a positive impact on the welfare of the animals in their care. With the caveat that every dog is an individual with specific needs that need to be met, simple interventions like feeding dogs their meals in enrichment items each day may yield improvements in observable fear, anxiety, and stress levels. This approach can feed multiple birds with one scone – helping the dogs to maintain an acceptable quality of life in care while simultaneously “training” them to cope with stress through species-typical behavior and, ideally, offer more desirable behaviors when adopters come to visit them.
Protopopova and Wynne (2015) found that an intervention as simple as tossing treats in each dog kennel in a shelter, regardless of the behavior each dog exhibited, was about as effective at eliciting desirable behaviors as a more sophisticated differential reinforcement procedure. To operationalize “desirable behavior,” Protopopova and Wynne used behaviors that had previously been shown to have an effect on a dog’s length of stay. For example, dogs who faced the front of their kennel tend to have a shorter length of stay in care than dogs who faced the back of the kennel (Protopopova et al., 2014). There is some data to suggest that these “adoptable” behaviors, trained through a noncontingent reinforcement procedure, could be fairly resistant to extinction, although the sample size for that finding was very small (Protopopova & Wynne, 2015). This means that the dogs may be able to continue to offer desirable behaviors to adopters passing by, whether or not the adopter tosses a treat in their kennel. These kinds of “low-hanging fruit” interventions can be carried out by anyone with any level of training, and may help improve fear, anxiety, and stress levels for a sizeable chunk of a shelter’s population, allowing behavior staff to focus resources on the animals who need more specialized intervention.
Delegating “kennel presentation” work to other staff and volunteers frees up time for more complex behavior cases. For these animals, we can and must continue to use enrichment strategically. As ethical shelter behavior professionals, we should always be providing our animals with a meaningful option to opt out of a training session. Add an enrichment item (or two! Or four!) to the training environment, and observe when the animal chooses to engage with a snuffle mat, for example, instead of the training session. This is critical feedback from a learner who may not engage in the session for any number of reasons, both internal and external to their experience.
We know that offering captive animals meaningful choices can have positive impacts on their welfare in zoological and laboratory settings (Dorey et al., 2015, Fernandez, 2022; Rust et al., 2024). More research is needed to determine if offering multiple options for contacting reinforcement through enrichment stations, specifically in animal shelters, leads to improved welfare, but it’s a promising hypothesis.
The ultimate goal in any training intervention should, at its purest distillation, be to improve welfare. For shelter animals, this often manifests as training sessions to help regulate arousal, build confidence, and learn coping skills in stressful situations. Blending enrichment into training sessions is a win-win-win scenario. The animal’s rate of reinforcement increases beyond what any human’s mechanical skills can deliver, the animal learns to engage with an enrichment item when they need space or are feeling uncomfortable, and the animal learns that they have agency in their interactions. Each of these is an important stepping stone to building confidence and trust over time.
Many of us working in shelters are overwhelmed, overworked, and cruising toward burnout. But no matter what, we do have time to toss treats in every kennel – or delegate that task to someone who does. And, if we’re going to do a training session anyway, we can take an extra moment to add some enrichment to the space first. Try it out, and document your results!
Do you blend enrichment and training in your sessions with shelter animals? Tell the world about it!
References
DeTar, L., Doyle, E., O’Quinn, J., Aziz, C., Berliner, E., Bradley-Siemens, N., Bushby, P., Cannon, S., DiGangi, B., Donnett, U., Fuller, E., Gingrich, E., Griffin, B., Janeczko, S., Kamiya, C., Karsten, C., Segurson, S., Smith-Blackmore, M., & Spindel, M. (2022). The guidelines for standards of care in animal shelters. Second edition. Journal of Shelter Medicine and Community Animal Health. https://doi.org/10.56771/asvguidelines.2022
Domjan, M. (2014). Principles of learning and behavior. Cengage Learning.
Dorey, N. R., Mehrkam, L. R., & Tacey, J. (2015). A method to assess relative preference for training and environmental enrichment in captive wolves (canis lupus and canis lupus arctos). Zoo Biology, 34(6), 513–517. https://doi.org/10.1002/zoo.21239
Fernandez, E.J. (2022). Training as enrichment: A critical review. Animal Welfare, 31(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.7120/09627286.31.1.001
Fernandez, E. J. (2024). The least inhibitive, functionally effective (life) model: A new framework for Ethical Animal Training Practices. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 71, 63–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2023.12.001
Friedman, S. G. (2009). What’s wrong with this picture? Effectiveness is not enough. Journal of Applied Companion Animal Behavior, 3(1), 41-45.
Markowitz, H. (1978). Engineering environments for behavioral opportunities in the zoo. The Behavior Analyst, 1(1), 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03392371
Milikan, D. (2012). Defining, Determining and Maintaining Best Practices within Our Force Free Organization. Barks Guild, 1(2), 8-9.
Pierce, W. D., & Cheney, C. D. (2017). Behavior analysis and learning: Sixth edition. Taylor and Francis.
Protopopova, A., Mehrkam, L. R., Boggess, M. M., & Wynne, C. D. (2014). In-kennel behavior predicts length of stay in Shelter Dogs. PLoS ONE, 9(12). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0114319
Protopopova, A., & Wynne, C. D. (2015). Improving in‐kennel presentation of Shelter Dogs through response‐dependent and response‐independent treat delivery. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 48(3), 590–601. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.217
Rust, K., Clegg, I., & Fernandez, E. J. (2024). The Voice of Choice: A Scoping Review of choice-based Animal Welfare Studies. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 275, 106270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2024.106270
Shepherdson, D.J. (1998) Second Nature: Environmental Enrichment for Captive Animals. Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington, DC, USA
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