This piece first appeared in the March 12, 2024 edition of our newsletter.
"Happy Visits" are becoming much more frequent among Fear Free professionals, but did you know they can be valuable in shelter settings as well? A Happy Visit is when an animal is brought to the veterinary clinic or groomer with the sole intention of building positive emotions. Depending on the individual animal, it can look like sitting in the parking lot of the vet and getting handfuls of treats, or entering and hanging out in the lobby or exam room with a lickimat or special chew. Some Happy Visits include veterinary staff interacting with the animal while others are only ready to see them from afar. Experienced Happy Visit animals may be working on cooperative care training plans in their exam room and include a certified trainer as well as the pet parent and veterinary staff. Happy Visits can help with puppy socialization and to decrease fear after a traumatic medical event.
So how can these be utilized in the shelter setting? The same way they are being used by pet parents and veterinary clinics in the real world. When an animal only enters shelter medicine or an exam room to get poked for vaccines or to treat a painful ear infection, fear can develop from those negative emotions and experiences. Even when medical procedures are accomplished in as Fear Free, LIMA way as possible, the actual procedures are often painful or aversive. We can mitigate the stress from multiple negative visits by sprinkling in Happy Visits.
Happy Visits in a shelter setting can look like an animal hanging out in an exam room with a volunteer or staff member doing their enrichment stations. It could also just be wandering in and treating the scale like another platform to station on, with a lickimat to guide them or clicker training to teach four paws on. Shelters that treat animals in their living space can do happy visits by veterinary staff entering with typical medical equipment (syringes, stethoscope) but offer treat scatters and enrichment stations instead.
Cats can do Happy Visits too! After all, a little churu on a scale goes a long way. For some cats a Happy Visit starts in the kennel with clicker training them to enter a den or carrier. Happy Visits can and should also set the animal up for success outside the shelter when they go to their new home. The only hindrance to Happy Visits should be capacity for care. Having a sign up on exam rooms when they are available for volunteers to swing by for happy visits can help or even utilizing those exam rooms regularly for enrichment by staff can also assist in building positive associations.
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