Reducing Animal Stress in Shelter and Rescue Groups

For my Gold Award, I am working to reduce stress and boredom in shelter and rescue animals mainly by enrichment and educating others.

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Inspiration for this Project

I was inspired to do this project because I have a strong passion for animals. Also, since I have visited animal shelters many times and have spent many hours volunteering at animal rescue groups, I have noticed that the animals look sad, scared, and anxious wanting to find a forever home. I want to help them live a happy life. Additionally, I was also inspired by my own animals.

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Root Cause and Issue

Food and water are the basic items that shelters give to their animals. Shelter pets rarely get toys to play with and enrichment activities. They spend most their time in their cage with little out time. Due to this, shelter animals get stressed and anxious from being bored and stuck in a cage all day long. This leads to them getting sick more often and an increase in behavioral issues, which makes them less likely to get adopted. They also tend to start having bad habits, such as pulling out their fur and spinning around in their cage.

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Common Stress Triggers

Sounds; Ex: Loud Noises
Unfamiliar Smells
Touch; Ex: Cold Floor, Nothing to Scratch (cats)
Visuals; Ex: Lots of People and Animals

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Project Overview

For my Gold Award, I am creating enrichment/de-stressing items to donate to local animal shelters and rescue groups. This includes food puzzles, toys, houses, privacy screens, and much more. The purpose of creating these items is to reduce the stress that animals face in shelters and rescue groups. I also advising staff and volunteers about additional ways to reduce stress in animals. An example of this is a rotating toy program that I created for the animals. For this program, I am having staff/volunteers rotate toys between animals (after washing and sanitizing them) when they clean their cages. This will prevent animals from getting bored of playing with the same toy for an extended amount of time.

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Items I made

Catnip toys, squeaky toys, tug toys, interactive toys, scratchers, privacy screens, hide-away houses/tents, food puzzles, hay rolls, beds, and blankets.

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How Each Item Helps Animals

Hideaways: Hideaways provide animals with privacy and security, improves their quality of life, and reduces their stress and anxiety.

Toys: Toys reduce animal boredom and stress, provides animals with enrichment, and can prevent animals from having behavioral issues.

Scratchers: Cat scratchers allow cats to calm down and reduce their stress, allow cats to stretch and exercise, relaxes cats, and helps cats get along better.

Blankets and Beds: Blankets and beds provide comfort and security for animals, especially shelter animals, as sleeping on a blanket/bed is much better than sleeping on the cold floor. Blankets and beds also help animals relax and de-stress. In addition, giving a shelter animal a blanket/bed that they can take wherever they go helps them feel safe in new environments.

Food Puzzles: Food puzzles reduces stress and anxiety in animals, provides enrichment and stimulation, decreases their chances of developing illnesses and behavioral issues, slows down fast easting, and makes animals happier.

Privacy Screens: Privacy screens provide shy cats with a sense of safety and security in the shelter, reduces their stress and anxiety from seeing lots of people and animals, and calms them.

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Global/National Link

Across the world, animals in shelters and rescue groups are feeling stressed out. My goal for this project is to have other shelters and animal rescue groups implement a stress reducing program. I hope that my project will be something that others will look up to and follow for inspiration on how they can help their local shelters or pet rescue groups.

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Presentations/Workshops

For the first half of my presentation, I covered the importance of reducing stress and boredom in shelter/rescue animals and ways to prevent it. In the second half of the presentation, I explained how to make some animal enrichment/de-stressing items and showed examples. I then provided materials and gave time for my audience to make their own animal items. I adjusted the level of difficulty to make these items depending on the ages of the audience members. I also made sure that all the items were made with common household objects so that people could make more items at home to donate. Additionally, I handed out take-home packets that summarized everything I talked about in the presentation and step-by-step instructions on how to make the items. After these workshops were over, I collected all the items made and donated them to local shelter/rescue groups. The purpose of doing these presentations was to produce more enrichment toys to donate and to educate others. I hope that people who attended my workshops will continue making and donating toys to shelters/rescue groups.

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Sustainability

I have made this project sustainable by the use of social media, blog posts, a website, videos, and presentations/workshops. By using the above, I taught others how to create pet items to donate to their local animal shelters/rescue groups using common household objects. I also taught others about the importance of animal enrichment and keeping animals less stressed. Another way I made my project sustainable was by asking people on social media to post pictures of enrichment items they made for shelter/rescue animals on their own social media account. This gave my project more engagement and allowed me to inspire more people. Additionally, I donated a custom-built donation bin to the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter, and an agility course to the Santa Monica Animal Shelter, which will both continue to be used after my project is over. I also helped Kitty Bungalow win a grant of $5,000!

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Long-Term Benefits/Goal

My overall goal for this project is to improve the experiences of animals in the shelters/rescue groups and reduce the stress, fear, anxiety, and frustration they have. Additionally, I hope to get more animals adopted by decreasing their behavioral issues that are caused by stress. Also, I want people to get inspired to help animal shelters and rescue groups by making enrichment/de-stressing items using the information and resources I provided.

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Animal Shelters/Rescue Groups I Have Donated to

Los Angeles Animal Services (West Los Angeles, East Valley, Chesterfield Square, North Central, West Valley, and Harbor)
Kitty Bungalow
Santa Monica Animal Shelter
Wags and Walks
NKLA
Pet Pride Cat Shelter
Operation Blankets of Love
Westside German Shepherd Rescue LA
Fur Baby
Stray Cat Alliance
O'Brians Gift
Forte Animal Rescue
Felines and Friends
Beach City Kitties
Cat Cafe Lounge
Lange Foundation