Doggy Dates for Shelter Dogs

For a 9-year-old, pet overpopulation is hard enough to say, much less understand. It’s harder still to imagine being able to do anything about the problem.

Olivia Haller might not be old enough to comprehend exactly how neglecting to have pets spayed or neutered contributes to the proliferation of homeless animals. She might not understand how those homeless pets end up in animal shelters and rescues that are chronically over capacity.

But the second grader is old enough and wise enough to understand on some level that animals don’t belong in cages in noisy shelters where they can become sad and withdrawn or anxious and agitated while waiting on their forever homes.

Olivia and her parents, Jessica and Tim Haller, and her teenage brother, Cody, are doing their part to help some of the cats and dogs in the care of Sand Springs Animal Welfare become the very best pets possible for their forever homes by serving as a foster home and by taking shelter dogs on doggy dates.

The doggy date concept is simple: Take a dog out for a few hours away from the shelter – a walk in the park, a stroll through a dog-friendly store or anything else that lets the dog burn off some energy, release a little shelter anxiety and spend some time around humans.

For Olivia, it’s even simpler than that.

“It’s fun,” she says. “I get to play and go to the river, and the dog gets to exercise and have some fun, relax (and) have a drink at the river.”

Besides stretching its legs, the dog is also learning appropriate behavior, how to walk on a leash and just how to be a family pet in general.

Put another way, “It helps it exercise and get moving and be free out of the kennel,” Olivia says. “It makes it be free and happy and get all the energy out – and have some fun.”

Olivia Haller, 9, pets Tory, a pit bull terrier mix, in the Haller family’s car during a doggy date. Tory was recently adopted through Sand Springs Animal Welfare.

Making introductions

An important component of doggy dates is the exposure the dogs get to other people who might want to adopt that dog or another one or even become a foster home.

In a sense, these dogs are ambassadors. But because they can’t talk, the humans accompanying them must.

“We always meet a lot of people – a lot of dogs and a lot of people,” Olivia says.

She always says hi, she says, but she admits it can be frustrating if the people don’t seem interested in the dog.

“It’s hard because they’re just going to walk away. They always walk away, most of them,” she says. “But some of them, I just say, ‘Hi, how are you doing? I have a dog.’ And then my mother tells what the dog’s name is because sometimes I forget.”

Jessica Haller says she’s happy to discuss specifics about the dog and answer questions.

“And then they pet the dog,” Olivia says.

These interactions, though brief, can often change the lives of dogs that have been languishing in a kennel.

Nova is a dog the Haller family took on a doggy date and later ended up fostering through Sand Springs Animal Welfare before she was adopted.

The benefits of fostering animals

The Hallers know firsthand the benefits a home environment provides an animal, even in a temporary foster situation.

“I think they need to go to homes,” Olivia says. “One, you have more space, and you have somebody to play with. Because there’s so many dogs there at the shelter, they don’t have that much time to play.”

Although they have four permanent pets of their own – a dog named Joe, two cats named Loy and Nugget, and a hamster named Hammy – the family has fostered 25 pets for Sand Springs Animal Welfare in the past year and a half.

“I actually followed them (SSAW) on social media,” Jessica Haller says. “And I was going to volunteer for some animal shelter, and I contacted several different ones, and they were the easiest ones to just walk in and start helping.”

Olivia says it can be kind of sad to say goodbye to foster pets when they leave, but she is mission-focused and understands that more animals are waiting to be helped.

“There’s lots of dogs,” she says. The shelter is “happy, but I know that there are a lot of animals. So what I want is all those animals to be gone.”

Olivia, who lives in Collinsville and attends Owasso Preparatory Academy, says she loves school and is a good student, both things that could help her in a future animal-related career, either as a veterinarian or even by making and selling animal food, an aspiration that took even her parents by surprise.

But for a few years, at least, she will stick to fostering animals and going on doggy dates, and that’s just fine with her parents.

“The most important thing to me is that she gets the example of ‘we care for animals that can’t take care of themselves,’” Jessica Haller says. “And we do things without expecting something in return, which is, you know, what working with animals is.”

Take a dog on a date

Want to go on a date with a dog? Kisses are all but guaranteed, and you might just end up falling in love.

Like most animal shelters and rescues, Sand Springs Animal Welfare is in chronic need of adoptive and foster homes for the pets in its care.

But if adopting or fostering are impossible commitments, consider taking one of the shelter’s dogs for a morning hike, an afternoon stroll or an outing to run errands around town. You’ll have given a shelter dog a fun day out and some invaluable skills toward finding its forever home.

For more information about doggy dates through Sand Springs Animal Welfare, call the shelter at 918.246.2543 or send an email to animalcontrol@sandspringsok.gov.

Sharon Bishop-Baldwin is a Tulsa-area freelance writer who also publishes the Sand Springs Line on Substack. She’s a cat mom who raises foster kittens for adoption and also a wildlife rehabilitator who raises raccoons and squirrels for release back to the wild.