Temperament Testing, It's Not Always What You Think.....

[Lokipups]

I'm posting this as sort of a continuation from the thread "My least favorite phrase from Animal Precinct", re, temperament testing.
Another member of the forum suggested I post this topic for all to read, and hopefully I can shed some light on this subject for those of you who may be unaware. Courtnek shares my views on this, to which you have my thanks :thumbs: !
This is an article from Best Friends Magazine, January/February 2004 issue, a publication from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

A Dirty Little Secret
Temperament testing. It sounds harmless enough, but it's a method that's being used to sanitize the troubling business of deciding who's "adoptable" and who isn't

>By Francis Battista

This article is just the tip of the iceberg of the subject, folks. If posting links to outside sources are acceptable, I will gladly do so, there are many people outraged over this topic, recues, shelters, and just plain dog lovers alike.

It's the latest big controversy at shelters and humane societies. The issue: which dogs and cats get to be labeled adoptable, and will therefore get saved, and which will be deemed unadoptable.
At the heart of the issue is the practice known as temperament testing.
Applied primarily to dogs, temperament testing purports to separate the doggie wheat from the doggie chaff, recommending the former to the eternal bliss (relatively speaking) of a new adoptive home, and the latter to a rapid demise.
The logic goes like this: There are too many dogs in shelters for the number of people wanting to adopt them, so it's better to concentrate on the ones who are well behaved out of the box, since these will be the least likely to cause problems in their new homes ans the most likely to stay adopted rather than be returned.
This can be translated more bluntly thus: Identify and kill the potential troublemakers right away, and bring the numbers of dogs available for adoption more in line with the number of people looking to adopt.
And the method that has been devised for sanitizing this troubling business is the temperament test.
Now, let's be clear. Behavioral evaluation goes on all the time, and we use our own version of testing here at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary - not as a life/death, pass/fail regime, but as a way of learning what areas of behavior need attention or what kind of home would be best for the dog.
However, temperament testing is hardly a science and, as used and abused in most municipal shelters, it has become a license to kill.
Paradoxically, all of this is being driven by the public demand for humane societies and shelters to move to low-kill or no-kill protocols. The temperament test simply enables the shelter to tell the public that fewer and fewer adoptable animals are being killed. In fact, by this logic, a shelter can actually kill more animals and still declare itself a low or no kill organization. After all, the only dogs being killed are the ones that failed the temperament test and are, therefore, unadoptable. By counting only the so-called adoptable animals in the no-kill equation, such organizations are attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of their membership or citizenry.
Don't be fooled by the air of clinical authority that is invoked by the term "temperament testing", especially as practiced in many municipal shelters where the dogs are frightened, confused, and possibly injured or under attack by cage-mates, and the smell of death is in the air. How in the world is anyone supposed to get an accurate reading on a dog's real nature in such threatening and unnatural surroundings? Dogs are often brought into a testing area that is often stained with urine and feces from other terrified dogs that preceeded them.
Their ears are pulled and their toes are pinched. And if they have an inappropriate response, they fail.
If they are not attentive to the tester, they fail.
If they don't let the tester roll them on their back, they fail.
In short, if they behave like anything other than a laboratory beagle, they can fail.
One of the leading proponents of temperament testing is on record as stating that something like 70 percent of shelter dogs in the Northeast are unadoptable and should be killed.
The point of this test given from this mindset is to find reasons to fail rather than pass a dog.
Adoptable and unadoptable are very relative, woolly, and ultimately meaningless terms.
Some dogs are clearly unadoptable. Responsible no-kill organizations will agree that a dangerously vicious dog or one that has zero quality of life due to illness or age should not be offered for adoption, and should probably be euthanized. It doesn't take a temperament test to figure that out.
On the other hand, Best Friends and other rescue organizations routinely find good homes for dogs that have one or more fatal flaws according to the temperament tests. We don't label them "unadoptable". We call them "special needs". And just as a dog with diabetes needs the right kind of home, so does a dog who, because of some earlier trauma, tends to snap at men who wear hats.
Communities and organizations that are truly committed to saving lives are moving away from the whole notion of rating their success on percentage of adoptable animals placed. Instead, we focus on the "live release rate", a calculation that includes all off the animals that come into our care.
The no-kill movement is not a numbers game or an accounting scam that shifts column headings on the numbers of animals killed to alter the balance sheet. It is a repudiation of the whole idea of using mass killing as a means of pet population control. Instead, it calls for a commitment to the lives of those animals already born, a reduction in the pet birth rate through spay/neuter, and a dramatic change in the way we, as a nation of self-described animal lovers, regard our pets.

"Killing animals on the basis of a temperament test is such a horrendous crime that those who do it have to become hardened in their defense of the theory in order to justify their crime. Sue Sternberg is a lousy trainer who justifies her inability by labeling her students as dangerous and uneducable"
- Francis Battista, co-founder,
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, 8/11/03

[KP]

Great post loki :wink: :D

[StarFox]

I'm curious, what other methods of temperment testing are there? I know about this method, I guess it could be called the Sue Sternburg(sp?) method. But I don't know of any other widely used methods.

[Lokipups]

Great post loki

Tater! Where've ya been :lol: ? You're missed at home :wink: .

UGH HER AGAIN

I take it you're not a fan either :evilgrinblack: :lol: .

I'm curious, what other methods of temperment testing are there? I know about this method, I guess it could be called the Sue Sternburg(sp?) method. But I don't know of any other widely used methods.

It's called Assess-a-Pet (tm), and it's actually nothing really new, people have been doing similar tests for eons, she was just smart enough to trademark and market it. The biggest disadvantage to the test is that there isn't any leeway for the variables (shelter situations, starved animals, etc.), and there has been no studies done to validate it's predictability, which, as a scientist, I find appalling :-? .
Jean Donaldson wrote an interesting article for alternatives to Assess-a-Pet(tm), she's a firm believer in common sense, something that's sorely lacking these days when working with animals.
http://www.bestfriends.org/nmhp/forumarchive/qa526to530jd2.html

[courtnek]

"Killing animals on the basis of a temperament test is such a horrendous crime that those who do it have to become hardened in their defense of the theory in order to justify their crime. Sue Sternberg is a lousy trainer who justifies her inability by labeling her students as dangerous and uneducable[quote]

I have been reading up on this. The tests themselves, as I thought originally, are good for judging what area's of the dogs behavior need improvement or modification...the example of the "men wearing hats" is a good one. That can be "psyched out" of a dog with time and patience.
or you can avoid wearing hats around the dog. Either way, it's not a reason to put the dog down. What I did NOT know, and Loki pointed out,
(thank you!) was that it's not just Sue Sternberg who is writing their own rules. Other shelters and humane socieities are following them as badly as she does. Reading up on Sue is worth your time....She is simply EVIL..
all she wants is to make a name for herslf and have her mug in the news.
She disregards the outcome of her own tests!!! and decides, on a whim in my opinion, which dogs stay and which dogs go...

She apparently doeesnt take into consideration the noise, fear and stench of the testing centers, the trauma of the dog, or the real results of the test. I dont believe the dog should be tested at all until it is less traumatized
and more comfortable. There are ways to calm them before the tests, so they arent so scared.....

What really pisses me off...according to her rules, my Foxhound should have been put down. She is afraid of, and barks at, men, including my
son. I have had her about 6 months...Only now is she starting to chill out a little and come down and "commune" with my son. She still barks and startles at loud noises, like slamming doors, but she is 100% better in my opinion.

It's taken me half a year to get here, but we are getting here, and the
love she has given back makes it worth it. But Sue would have put her down, probably my Lab mix too, cuz she doesnt like small kids, or strangers....

If I sound angry, it's because I AM....this woman should not be allowed to make decisions for animals, or anything else. She's only in it for her....

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

[kendalyn]

good post Courtnek, I agree whole heartedly. Sternberg has no place in the dog rescue world. :x