A new leash on life

Most animals who pass through the doors of the Wisconsin Humane Society’s Green Bay Campus experience a short stay, averaging about 10 days, but for some dogs, labelled ‘the benchwarmers,’ finding the right home is not such a quick process.

Last month, the Humane Society kicked off a new program aimed at helping those benchwarmers get out of the shelter — and hopefully into their forever homes.

For all animals that come through the Humane Society, foster homes offer an opportunity to get out of the shelter environment, which can have negative effects on an animal’s mental health.

“They can get hyperactive, and we’ve seen that it just turns into all of their negative behaviors getting a little worse,” Corey said. “You can imagine, if every single day your stress levels were as high as they possibly could be, what that would do to your mental health. Three months of that much stress would really hurt anybody. And it’s the same for these animals — that high stress level is hard on them. So we try our best to get them out and into calm, loving homes.”
“We rely on our foster homes to be able to take some of these animals and care for them in their home and outside of the shelter environment, which can be kind of stressful,” Corey said. “We try to make it as great as we can and we try so hard to take amazing care of these animals, but it’s just not a super great environment.”

Through the Benchwarmer Tryout program, individuals and families can go through the shelter’s foster system to bring home a benchwarmer on a trial basis— taking the animal into their home for seven days with the option to adopt or return them at the end of the week.

To get these animals able to go out, even if it’s just for a week — we understand they’re not going to get adopted right away every time they go out — just to get them out there is kind of like taking a vacation.”

Even if a tryout doesn’t result in an adoption, the dogs still benefit from their time out of the shelter.

“That’s one of the things that we like about the Benchwarmers Tryout program,” Corey said. “It helps them get a break from the shelter and it helps get them in front of more people. If you sign up to be one of those benchwarmer tryout people, you go through the foster system and you pick out which benchwarmer you want. You get to take them home for a week and if they work in your home, that’s fantastic and you can fill out the rest of the adoption. And if not, it’s totally fine. You can bring them back and the worst thing that happens is they get a break from the shelter — a little vacation — and you can pick up another dog to see if they’ll work in your home.”

As for how dogs become benchwarmers, Corey said it is often not one big issue, but lots of small factors that cause a dog to spend an extended amount of time in the shelter.

“We try our best, of course, to get everybody out the door as fast as possible,” Corey said. “But we get a lot of puppies and everybody loves puppies, so they’ll be in and out pretty quick. Our senior dogs will probably stay a little longer, unfortunately. And if they have any allergies or medications, that’s a big cost for a family to take on. And animal people usually have a lot of animals at home, so when we say an animal could really use all the attention or just be the single animal in the home, a lot of people might not want to adopt that one because they’ve got other animals at home… These things don’t mean they’re bad dogs. They’re not aggressive… But all of these little things pile up and they make it so [these dogs] sit just a little longer, even though they’re fantastic.”

That’s exactly what happened for Ozzie, a seven-year-old dog who is still searching for a home to call his own.

“Ozzie’s one of our benchwarmers… He’s been here for just a little bit longer,” Corey said. “He’s got some conditions, but he’s super sweet. And he’s a little bit older, and those kinds of animals are usually here a little bit longer than average. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad animals. Ozzie’s fantastic, but because he’s seven years old and he has some special needs, it’s hard to give dogs like him a chance and find them good homes.”

And Pastila, currently the shelter’s longest resident, is in a similar situation — a good dog with a few restrictions that have steered potential adopters away.

“Pastila got here at the beginning of the year, so she’s been here quite a long time,” Corey said. “Pastila is fantastic, but she can’t go to a home with any other animals, so we’re looking for somewhere she’ll be the only one with all of the attention, and she has some dietary restrictions and the food is kind of expensive. She’s a fantastic dog, but it just kind of is what it is.”

More information about the Humane Society’s current benchwarmers and the Benchwarmer Tryout program can be found at wihumane.org.