Community gets hands-on training to handle animals from national expert

When you encounter a scared, injured or aggressive stray dog, what do you do? It’s an intimidating situation many on Guam face, on the job and in their neighborhoods. Today, a nationally-recognized animal handling expert is showing how to do it safely, effectively, and humanely.

Animal control officers, shelter staff, rescue groups and more among the community getting hands-on training Thursday at the Mongmong-Toto-Maite Mayor’s Office. It's the Guam Department of Agriculture’s Division of Animal Health and Guam Animals In Need's 2nd Animal Handling Workshop. 

Leading this year's workshop is John Peaveler, owner of Humane Innovations, who trains animal control and shelter professionals around the globe. "I travel quite a lot, to different countries and all across the United States, and we teach animal control and animal care facilities how to be safer, how to catch more animals," he explained.

Peaveler says everything he teaches comes back to three key principles, saying, "So we want to make sure that we’re safe for our staff, but also for the public and for the dog. We don’t want to harm dogs in the process of what we’re doing. 

"We want to help them be effective and we want to give them the right tools to catch animals...and then we want to be humane, as well."

Territorial veterinarian Dr. Mariana Turner says more than 40 people took part in the training, representing a wide range of agencies. "Of course, we have Animal Control, we have GAIN and SNIP, we have our USDA partners and a couple of our mayors offices [personnel] here as well," she told KUAM News. "It’s just really exciting to see the whole community come together, and of course our rescue partners. It’s a really great opportunity to get the information out there on how everyone can help with this issue and stay safe at the same time."

Peaveler says the workshop is to give people more options when dealing with dogs in unpredictable situations. "Not everything goes perfectly every time. Dogs can be very difficult in different circumstances. But how can we do our best work, our most professional work? How can we keep the trust of the community throughout the process?" he said.

Having worked on islands around the world, he says Guam is moving in the right direction when it comes to dog population management.

"Compared to some, Guam has made a lot of progress," he shared. "There’s obviously a lot more progress that can be made– there’s still a lot of sick and injured animals, including a large number of animals– but we understand how we address those issues and we’re definitely on the right path to success here."

According to the latest estimates, there are about 8,000 free-roaming dogs and nearly 60,000 owned dogs locally. Peaveler says that means the solution goes beyond government enforcement, pointing out, "This is not a matter of ‘well, the government needs to catch all the dogs.’ The source of the dogs is the 60,000 owned dogs. So the community also has to step up and do their part."

He adds that training and proper equipment are key, not just for animal safety, but for the people doing the job. "We want to make sure they have the equipment and the training to succeed and they can feel good about what they do and how they do it. We want them to have as many tools as possible so they can try to solve these complex problems. We also want the community to thank them for the amazing work that they do," he said.