The Whitestone-based animal rescue nonprofit New York City Second Chance Rescue has partnered with the video chat dog training service GoodPup to launch a scholarship program providing adopted shelter dogs with personalized training.
Coming at no cost to the owners of these dogs, the Advantage Program is meant to address issues like high return rate, long lengths of stay and lower than desired live release rates.
New York City Second Chance Rescue Director of Operations Tayef Farrar told QNS she was eager incorporate the program into the organization’s adoption packages after GoodPup reached out to her. Farrar noted the partnership began at a time when her organization had been seeing an increased amount of people surrendering their pets back.
“GoodPup has made it so incredibly easy for pet guardians to get access to professional dog training that is convenient, affordable and most importantly, uses force free training methods only,” Farrar said. “I can’t think of another service that offers this type of support which makes me feel really good about our partnership with GoodPup.”
Prior to the official launch of the program on July 12, the two organizations had been partnering and beta testing the scholarship for more than a year. The beta testing showed that those who adopted and enrolled in the Advantage Program were significantly less likely to return the dog.
“Our partnership with GoodPup began over a year ago when we started issuing scholarships to provide behavior and training support to our fosters.” Farrar said. “All the feedback we received was very positive, particularly from fosters who were struggling with challenges like leash reactivity or resource guarding. Fosters were asking us for additional scholarships because they found the training to be so beneficial for them and their foster dogs.”
According to GoodPup Co-founder and General Manager Micah Adler, New York City Second Chance Rescue was one of seven or eight shelters to take part in the beta program. He noted the importance of the feedback for the Advantage Program provided by New York City Second Chance Rescue and the other beta participants.
Each pet adopter who signs on for the Advantage Program will receive a weekly one-on-one training from a certified trainer over video chat. Additionally, they will have access to 24/7 chat with GoodPup’s training and veterinary team and interactive educational material tailored to them.
GoodPup takes a unique approach as a leading provider in dog training. The organization provides training through video chat. According to Adler, this helps GoodPup to provide a high quality product. He said GoodPup has been able to help train nearly 75,000 dogs, with all these sessions allowing for them to collect data to better determine some of the most and least effective methods. Since the lessons are virtual, GoodPup has managed to serve more people by saving on travel time.
“In addition to that, it allows us to do dog training in a very distraction-free environment,” Adler said. “You don’t have a stranger coming into your house. Instead, you’re asking your dog to learn in the environment that you want them to be successful in.”
Adler said New York City Second Chance Rescue was one of the first partners GoodPup contacted about the prospect of being a part in the beta program. It proved to be very successful, with return rates there as well as at the other beta locations being significantly reduced.
GoodPup works with more than 850 shelters in total. They hope to bring the Advantage Program to many of these shelters in the near future.
