Kids 'N Critters at Cozy Nook Farm

During the summer our week-long campers take a field trip to an animal related location.  We go to different locations throughout the summer so that repeat campers get new experiences. 

One of our favorite field trips is to Cozy Nook Farm in Waukesha.  Cozy Nook is a small family owned diary farm with 65 cows and a couple of goats. The kids get to learn about life on a diary farm; milking the cows twice a day, how calves are raised, the work it takes to bring in crops of hay and corn, and other cow related information. 

For some of the kids this is their first visit to a diary farm and while the start out a bit cautious while interacting with the cows, after a short time they're enthusiastically hand feeding hay and petting their soft noses. 



It never fails that the campers are excited to see the barn cats -- which always astounds the counselors since they just spent most of the previous week at HAWS with many cats and kittens.  But one of the nice things about Cozy Nook is that all of their cats are spayed and neutered.  This helps support the message we give the kids the importance of spay and neuter to combat the cat over-population problem.  As a matter of fact Cozy Nook has used HAWS Project Guardian Program which offers free spay and neuter services for barn cats and other cared for out-door cats. 

One of the final aspects of this field trip is a hay ride to see the hay, corn, alfalfa and corn fields, and Cozy Nook's honey bee boxes.  The kids learn just how important bees are to pollinating crops. 

Hopefully our campers think about all the work that goes into their food the next time they drink a glass of milk or take a bite of cheese. 

Kids N Critters Camp and Dog Training

One of the benefits of my job at HAWS Waukesha is that not only do I get to bring my dogs to work with me, but I get to have use them in our education programs.  This turns out to be a win both for my dogs and myself, but also for the kids since I know my dogs will be safe for the kids to handle.   

During camp the kids take my dogs on walks, give them baths and help with training.   Over the years campers have helped me with honing Mystic's tricks, helped me proof him in behaviors such as stay and leave it, and have been entertained and educated as I used him for training demonstrations. 

This summer has seen the addition to my household of Quinn, a 9 month old border collie mix, which means that Quinn has also been an addition to our camp program. 

Quinn is a very different dog than Mystic.  He's a bit more mellow and laid back, but he also lacks confidence.  While he really loves kids, I've started to see him become more cautious in new situations.  Adolescent dogs can go through a fear period in which they exhibit fear in situations that they wouldn't have been afraid of when they were younger.  When this happens it's important to help them develop more confidence in these situations. 

The most important thing to remember about fear and animals is that it's not wise to force them to interact with something that scares them.  Locking me in a room for an hour with hundreds of spiders isn't likely to make me love spiders, but may actually traumatize me further and cause me to be even more afraid.  Helping me feel more comfortable around spiders by encouraging me and allowing me to make progress at my own pace is much more likely to be effective. 

Recently Quinn started displaying fear by barking and backing up at a park when he saw a woman who had been doing sit ups suddenly stand up.  I decided I needed to address this before his fear people doing unusual things escalated, and since we have so many kids at camp it's the perfect opportunity.  Additionally using the kids allows them to learn about dog training, and actually do some training with a dog themselves. 

Below is video of Quinn at camp.  One of the kids is his trainer luring him over kids who are laying on the ground.  Quinn is starting to enjoy this game, gain some confidence, and the kids think it's a lot of fun to not only be stepped over, but to have a turn as his trainer. 

Kindness Tickets

Part of humane education is teaching children respect and empathy for all living things, including people.  While we encourage kids to be respectful of each other, our curriculum has been focused on teaching children about animals.

This year HAWS started a new program at our camps called Kindness Tickets.  The first day of camp each camper is given 10 tickets and they are asked to write their names on the tickets.  They are encouraged to give the tickets to each other for any acts of kindness they might observe their fellow campers performing.  Counselors are also encouraged to hand out tickets. 

Several times throughout the week Kindness Tickets are counted and campers with the most tickets are rewarded.  Their own tickets don't count towards the total, nor can they count more than two tickets collected from the same person.  This prevents kids from swapping tickets in an effort to win.  Once they've been awarded a prize the winner's tickets are disposed of and they start without any, although they can win a second time. 

Initially our rewards were items from a prize box, but the enthusiasm for the program was lukewarm.   Then the dog trainer in me thought about what would really motivate the kids.  The answer is time with animals -- which is why the kids attend camp at an animal shelter to begin with.  Kindness ticket winners get 15 minutes with the animal of their choice with the option to ask a friend to share their animal interaction. 

Campers have told me that they really like the program.  One girl told me that at the beginning of the week she made an effort to be nice because she wanted to earn enough tickets to win, but by the end of the week she was being nice because it seemed like the right thing to do.    Maybe coming to Kids 'N Critters Day Camp will help kids learn to be kind not only to animals, but to each other. 

Stereotypes and Breeds

This blog post was written by a guest blogger.  Madison is 11 years old and has been attending HAWS Kids 'N Critter Camps for many years.  As a matter of fact she enjoys it so much she usually comes 4 or more weeks every summer. 

Madison is currently attending our Camp Gone to the Dogs in which a group of 3 campers is assigned an adoptable dog to care for during the week.  Yesterday Madison told me about something that she saw happen at the shelter that made her angry, and I asked if she would mind writing about it. Here it is in her words:

Hi, my name is Madison and I come to a lot of HAWS summer camps every year.  This week I'm in Camp Gone to the Dogs. 

While I was putting my dog back in his kennel there was a lady looking for a puppy, so one of the other campers told her to look at Bailey, and adorable pit bull mix puppy. 

The lady said, "Oh, you're cute!!!".  Then she looked at Bailey's information card and saw "pit bull mix".  The lady then said "pit bull mix! I thought you were cute!!!" in a snotty way. 

It shouldn't matter the breed of the dog; if the dog is cute, the dog is cute.  I felt sad for Bailey and angry at the lady for saying that about her.  I feel sad for Bailey and other pit bulls that may be getting passed up for adoption because of false stereotypes about the breed.  This is why people need to be educated about pit bulls and other misjudged breeds.  If this lady would have been educated or more open minded about pit bulls, Bailey could have had a much higher chance to get adopted soon. 

Camp at HAWS

Since HAWS accepts all different types of animals, we get many species that other shelters don't experience.  It makes it interesting to work here and interact with animals I would never have had an opportunity to work with otherwise. 

This means that the education department also has the opportunity to share our knowledge and interactions with many different types of animals with the participants of our programs.  Since we've just finished our third week of HAWS Kids 'N Critters Summer Camps, we've been able to do just that with the campers that are attending our programs. 

Domestic rats are a personal favorite of mine.  They get a bad rap because of the poor reputation their wild relations have, but they are actually wonderful pets.  Not only are they entertaining to watch as they move about their habitat, but they are extremely smart and social animals.  If they're used to being handled they are very snuggly, and can be taught to do tricks and come when called. 


A new species to me is the African Sidenecked Turtle.  I first learned about these guys when one was surrendered to HAWS a few months ago.  Native to Africa they can't pull their heads all the way into their shell, so turn their head sideways. 
Voodoo the snake isn't available for adoption, but rather an education snake on loan from a fellow employee.  The kids really enjoy Voodoo the corn snake.  While he's 4 feet long, he isn't very wide and easily handled, which is why corn snakes make such great pets.  Many of the kids are interacting with a snake for the first time when they meet Voodoo, and find out that not only is he not slimy, but he's actually pretty fun to handle. 

Don't get the wrong idea.  The campers get plenty of times with dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs.  But coming to camp allows them to learn about other types of animals as well.  And we still have room in many of our up-coming sessions.  So if you know an animal loving kid who wants to have fun this summer give us a call!

Fun on the Farm

The Education Department has two seasons -- the school year and camp.  While we have already started our summer camp sessions,  I wanted to recap some recent adventures from our school year. 

The first was our Critter Club's recent field trip to Heartland Farm Sanctuary.   This was our club's second visit, the first being a year ago.  Many of the kids were new to Critter Club and this was their first visit.  The kids who had already been on the field trip were thrilled to be able to go again since they loved the experience so much the first time. 

The year the weather was much better and the kids had a great experience helping out with farm work.  They cleaned chicken coops, cleared manure from the goat pen, mucked out some stalls, and made sure that animals had food and water.  We left the farm that afternoon tired, happy, and feeling good about contributing our time to helping needy animals. 

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The next story is about a program I started at Saratoga STEM Academy in Waukesha.  Based on my success with working with kids from Hadfield Elementary during spring break camp and having them do a canine cognition study, I decided to see if I could get a similar program going at a middle school.  A STEM school seemed like the perfect place to implement such a program.  Luckily the staff at Saratoga agreed with me and were really excited about a collaboration.

My program ran during the Connect Session at the school over a period of 10 weeks.  Connect is the hour during lunch in which kids have options to engage in different activities, programs, or just do homework.   Ten students were interested in learning about dog cognition and enrolled in the program. 

During the course of the session I showed a lot of videos on cognition studies being done with various species of animals, talked about the difficulties that a person runs into with animals such as the "Clever Hans Effect", and had the kids come up with their own study to be implemented at HAWS. 

The study they came up with was a variation of the Social Eavesdropping study in which a dog observes someone begging for food from two individuals -- one of whom is generous and gives the dog food, and the other a selfish person who says "No".  The dog is then released to see which of the two individuals he approaches. 

The Saratoga group put an interesting twist on it.  They decided to see if the dog was more or less likely to go to the owner if the selfish person was the owner of the dog, rather than a stranger. 

While the sample size was only 11 dogs, the majority of the dogs did go to their owners rather than to the generous person.  The kids came to the conclusion that social interaction was more important to dogs than the opportunity to obtain a treat. 

I was really proud of the work they did on this project, and especially proud at their conclusion of the data.  I'm hopeful that I'll be able to do the program at Saratoga again next year, and perhaps even expand it to other schools in Waukesha County. 

Ask the Dog

It's Dog Bite Prevention week, although I personally believe that we should prevent dog bites every week throughout the year. 

The purpose of Dog Bite Prevention week is to educate people so that dog bites can be prevented.  I've been a humane educator for 9 years, and have gone through a lot of educational materials with this goal in mind.  The information I give children is constantly evolving as I try to decide what is most important.  I try to keep in mind that too much material will cause the message to be lost, and less is sometimes more.

A common aspect of most dog safety presentations is to ask the owner of the dog if a child want's to approach and pet the dog.  This is a really great habit for both children and adults to get into.  Some dogs are not comfortable with strangers and some are nervous around children.  Asking the owner first allows the owner to keep the dog safe if this is the case. 

Recently I've started to incorporate a new part to my presentation.  It's fantastic to ask the owner, but there's someone else who should be asked before a child pets a dog, the dog himself.  While a dog can't respond with a verbal "yes" or "no", it's true that actions speak louder than words.  I tell children that they should be standing several feet from the dog and owner, and after the owner has given permission they should pat their legs and greet the dog.  If the dog wants to say "hi" he will come to them.  If he doesn't he may stay where he is or walk away from the child.  Either way he's letting the child know if he wants to be petted or just isn't in the mood.

One of the things I like about this is that many times I've seen children approach the dog, start to pet, and ask all at the same time.  By telling them to allow the dog to come to them they truly have to wait for permission before they can pet the dog.  And it's always safer to let a dog come to you, rather than invade the space of a dog who may feel insecure or anxious about being unable to avoid the interaction. 

The other thing I like about this practice is that it allows the dog a choice.  Part of humane education is to help children develop empathy for living creatures.  Asking the dog shows them that dogs have feelings and preferences just like people, and will show children the feelings of others are important.