Match-Up II Lands Frog His Forever Home
Frog came to the Animal Rescue League of Boston’s Brewster location from an overcrowded shelter in Louisiana. He was young, about 6 months old and full of energy! Brewster transferred him to the Boston shelter so that the Boston staff and volunteers, under the direction of the Center for Shelter Dogs, could teach him to be less unruly.
On his Match-Up II behavior evaluation, Frog showed friendly behaviors such as wagging his tail and staying near people on most of the subtests. He showed some fear behaviors like licking his lips (just once), but also jumped up on people and lightly put his mouth on them liked to play! He also grabbed the leash in his mouth on walks. He played all of the games on the evaluation and even tried to play with the rubber hand on the possessiveness subtests. He showed no signs of aggression. When Match-Up II Online tallied his personality scores they turned out as shown below:
In other words, Frog was very friendly, hardly fearful, very excitable, very playful and not at all aggressive.
Due to Frog’s high friendliness, excitability and playfulness scores, the Boston staff looked for an owner who liked to hang out with people, had an active lifestyle, would play with Frog a lot, and did not mind working with his jumpiness.
Frog spent over a month with the Boston shelter as the staff searched for the right adopters. But during that time, Frog was placed into the Center for Shelter Dogs’ jumpy/mouthy program. As a result, Frog’s jumpy/mouthy behavior declined and the perfect owners were found for him. He was adopted by people who were enthralled by him and renamed him Hero.
After two months, I asked Hero’s new owners to rate Hero’s personality on a scale of one to five for friendliness, fearfulness, excitability, playfulness and aggression. I compared their personality ratings to the ones that we identified in the shelter. Hero’s ratings were pretty much the same! Hero’s owners thought he was very friendly, just a little fearful, very excitable, very playful and not aggressive. Here are the ratings Hero’s owners gave him:
Friendliness: 5 out of 5
Fearfulness: 1 out of 5
Excitability: 4 out of 5
Playfulness: 5 out of 5
Aggression: 0 out of 5
And in his new owners’ words: “He is definitely a sweet and loving dog. I honestly can say I can’t imagine life without Hero at this point. I think we all feel that way. He does still bite on the leash only when we are in a field and he cannot be let free until we are in an enclosed area. We have been continuing his training and he seems to be doing well. He is very very very friendly to other people including small children.”
Here is Hero on his family’s Christmas card. What a lucky guy!
– Dr. Amy Marder, Director of the Center for Shelter Dogs