At animal shelters, youth learn to care for cats and dogs – and each other | Canada Voices

In the back of the Grade 6 classroom, the boy sat alone, not talking to anyone, slumped at his desk with the hood of his sweatshirt drawn over his face.

Years later, Karen Marsh, the executive director of the Georgian Triangle Humane Society, can still picture him clearly. He was the only one in the Collingwood, Ont., class that day not engaging in the discussion while she explained the history and value of the animal-human bond, as part of an education program offered to local schools.

Ms. Marsh kept her eye on him. As she recalled in a recent interview, she knew that he’d recently lost his grandfather, and his parents were deeply worried about him. He was skipping class – and family dinners – and barely spoke.

To Ms. Marsh, an experienced former English and history teacher, his hard shell was a defence against grief he didn’t know how to share.

Perhaps, she thought, a four-legged listener could succeed where the humans in his life, so far, had not.

The education program at the Georgian Triangle Humane Society, like many other animal shelters and refuges across North America, teaches young people how to care and communicate with companion animals in the hope of promoting pro-social behaviour and empathy toward humans as well.

Launched in 2017, the program currently provides education and training to 3,500 students a year, including a four-week Junior Animal Wellness Certificate program. In June, Humane Canada, the national association of animal welfare associations and shelters, launched an online version of the program for educators across the country.

This year, a pilot project involving 13 shelters across the country will report back on the outcome of delivering animal welfare education. Researchers will use before-and-after surveys with students to determine whether and how the program changes attitudes toward animals – and, ideally, fosters compassion in general.

In particular, the pilot project focuses on boys, in hopes of preventing early animal cruelty, a known precursor to gender-based violence and other types of aggression.

Published studies have already found that this kind of education can increase self-esteem, well-being and kindness among children and teenagers. A 2018 report on the Georgian Triangle program, for instance, found that students who completed the in-shelter certificate program reported higher levels of confidence and were more likely to say that they had helped a person or animal.

Ms. Marsh left her teaching job in 2014 after 22 years, frustrated with a public-school system that allowed smartphones in the classroom, without clear guidelines on their use. She watched her students withdraw into their screens. Bullying became more pernicious.

She wanted to find another way to reach children and teenagers.

So when she was hired as a humane educator by the shelter in 2017, she launched a curriculum to teach students ethics and empathy, through lessons about animals. Plus, it’s hard to hold a phone when you’re cuddling a puppy.

Over a series of in-school classes, for example, she would tell students that a cat’s pupils will enlarge when they are upset. And when greeting a strange dog, she advised, respect their personal space. But she’d also ask: How do your friends show signs that they don’t like your joke? How would you feel if you were on your way to school one day, and someone out of nowhere just walked up and started hugging you?

At one school, a student admitted his father hits his dog for peeing on the living-room rug. She explained a better approach, and then queried the class: “How do you like to be treated when you’ve done something wrong?”

Animals, she says, can be a pathway to these larger ethical conversations. “I wanted to give kids the courage to look outside themselves.” But that requires opening a door for them to walk though.

During the second class, she asked the withdrawn boy if he would hand out the worksheets. He grudgingly complied. The next class, he moved closer to the front. By the fourth, he was volunteering his opinion from the first row, and greeting her at the door, offering to help. And when the classes were completed, he signed up for the after-school program.

In the classroom portion of the Georgian Triangle program, puppies or therapy dogs often visit, but Ms. Marsh says the most amazing moments happen at the shelter. A child holding a kitten or puppy for the first time often cries from the awe and joy of the experiences. “I never got that in my Shakespeare class,” she says.

In that moment, she suggests, the students see they have a choice: To love or to harm a creature who is trusting them unconditionally. “They feel that responsibility,” she says, “and they relate it other kids they see being bullied and start to question that use of power and strength.”

Elliot Gardiner, 9, who participated in the after-school program, said he learned that while dogs wag their tails in happiness, cats flick their tails when they’re anxious – a lesson he can apply to his family’s 13-year-old cat. At the shelter, he says, kids can learn “to be more gentle to animals, and they won’t hurt them.”

His mom, Stephanie Gardiner, says that after he participated in the program, she noticed he seemed more confident encountering large dogs outside, and when approaching new experiences. Ms. Gardiner, who teaches horseback riding, says she sees the same progression in her own students, when they realize their actions are making the horse trust them. “It seems to bring out trust in themselves as well.”

Toby Clarke, 15, has been participating in the after-school programs since he was in Grade 6. His favourite resident was a calm, partially bald and entirely toothless old cat named Barnaby, who would lounge on the mat in his cage, and accept attention each time Toby visited. Barnaby lived at the shelter for five months, before he was adopted. Over the weeks that Toby visited, he began to heal. His hair grew back, he strutted around the shelter and he tolerated the occasional homemade hat that Toby brought in for photo sessions.

Toby had always assumed Barnaby was at least 12 years old. “I learned that he was actually two years old at the end,” he says. He also learned about the consequences of trauma, and that cats need time and attention to recover from difficult experiences – just like humans.

This is the goal, says Ms. Marsh, that students start to see the similarities between animals and humans, and are prompted to consider what it means to live in community, to pay attention to those in need and help one another. How often kids make those connections will be one question assessed in the pilot project. Meanwhile, the shelter is finalizing plans and funding for a new Regional Centre for People and Pets to take in more animals and offer programming to more students.

At the shelter, Ms. Marsh watched the sad boy from the class instantly bond with an anxious dog who had been surrendered to the shelter when his owner died. He searched the dog out on every visit, and, slowly, he started talking to his parents, smiling more and stopped missing school.

The dog became more social too – wagging his tail furiously when the boy arrived, showing his belly for scratches. It was as if, Ms. Marsh says, they worked through their sadness together.

For Ms. Marsh, the story remains her most powerful first-hand example of healing and connection between an animal and a young person.

“His parents were so thankful,” she recalls. “He was able to express his grief and find someone to love.”

And on the last day of the program, the dog found his forever home. The boy’s parents showed up at the shelter to sign adoption papers, surprising everyone – including their son.