Workshop On Dog Behavior Held By Abhay Sankalp In Dehradun

Abhay Sankalp- a stray dog management program powered by Humane Society International/India organized workshops “Dog Behavior” in residential societies for kids and adults from the 18-24^rdNovember. The purpose was to bring about awareness on how to deal with street dogs and also have a positive connect with strays around them. The workshop was facilitated by Nidhi Sanghrajka Mehta, a certified canine behaviorist & trainer.

During the workshop, the facilitator and Abhay Sankalp team carried out different activities to improve the community’s ability to become compassionate towards street dogs in real life. They learned to interpret common dog behavior, read dog body language, how to be safe around them and improved social skills. They learned to interact with dogs in human ways, including but not limited to, approach a dog when it appears anxious, stressed or fearful, remain safe around dogs, and the role of animals in our society. Residents also shared their personal happy and bad experiences with street dogs and asked suggestions on how to tackle such situations in the future.

Whereas, kids strengthened their self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense of responsibility and commitment towards their colony street dogs. The workshop effectively guides them on how to behave around dogs so they can have a safe and enjoyable human-dog relationship. They understand that “humans need to behave right to get dogs to behave right”.

“The workshop was done to spread awareness within the local community to understand the stray dogs better. What I observed was that the community overall is quite dog-loving, hence with few solutions to the issues they were quite accepting. The community was quite patient with understanding the dog body language and a lot of myths were broken”, says Nidhi Sanghrajka Mehta.

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