We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Delyse Gannaway a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Delyse, so great to have you with us and thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with the community. So, let’s jump into something that stops so many people from going after their dreams – haters, nay-sayers, etc. We’d love to hear about how you dealt with that and persisted on your path.
Sacramento Shelter Pets Alive’s (SSPA) motto is “Where all dogs matter.” SSPA has never wavered from this mindset, and we’ve committed ourselves to being a support system for dogs in need, along with their families.
As animal shelters overflow with dogs and turn away strays amid the pet-overpopulation crisis, we’re seeing all too often that community members are being left to bear the burden – from capturing stray animals to providing shelter for them. Since we started, SSPA has aimed to be a safety net by providing innovative and comprehensive behavioral and rehabilitative programs, foster care and placement, adoption facilitation, and training and playgroups for both shelter dogs and community dogs and their families in need. Our ultimate goal: to improve outcomes for dogs inside and outside the shelter system and keep dogs out of shelters.
When you are uncompromising in your mission, vision and values; advocate and work for meaningful change and accountability; and offer innovative solutions, you’re bound to encounter nay-sayers comfortable with the status quo. SSPA is no exception, and we’ve come up against plenty of folks within the system unwilling to change, accept help or take advantage of our services. But that has only heightened our dedication and perseverance.
Ultimately, our disillusionment with the state of sheltering, an apparent misalignment in values and unwillingness by many in the system to try innovative solutions led us to our new role: Offering donation-based guidance, training and dog playgroups to build understanding between dogs and their families and set everyone up for success. Years of working within the shelter system and developing deep knowledge of dog behavior in some of the most stressful circumstances gave us a unique perspective, highlighting the desperate need for accessible guidance and training after bringing home a dog. Without that support, many dogs face a bleak prospect: landing in already-beyond-overcrowded shelters. With years of expertise in dog behavior and our view of each dog as an individual, we wanted to be that safety net for our community’s dogs and their families.
Since we started in May, appointments from folks across Sacramento County and beyond have soared, proving just how needed – and how effective – these services are. Watching these dogs and their families grow together is the most rewarding thing, and we’re excited to continue to rise to the challenge.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Sacramento Shelter Pets Alive (SSPA) approaches every dog as an individual, with the understanding, backed by scientific research, that physical appearance does not determine behavior. SSPA is committed to providing innovative and comprehensive behavioral and rehabilitative programs, foster care and placement, adoption facilitation, and training and playgroups for dogs and their families in need in the Greater Sacramento and Stockton area to improve outcomes and keep dogs out of shelters.
When we started 12 years ago, block-headed dogs in particular were being left in shelter kennels, leading to kennel stress at a much quicker rate and ultimately euthanization. Dogs were isolated and there were no playgroups or any other socialization opportunities for them. Walking the dogs parallel with each other was considered innovative. Euthanasia was highly determined by looks and opportunities for those dogs were limited at best. In 2012, around the time we started at Sacramento County Animal Care and Regulation as Pit Bull Socialization and Obedience Crew (PB SOC), we began to implement playgroups and other programs for dogs’ well-being. When we started, the live outcome for dogs at the shelter was 65%.
Our program has evolved as we learned, grew, and expanded our mission and vision. In 2016, we expanded our focus to better serve all shelter dogs in need, focusing primarily on those behaviorally deteriorating, which led to our current name: Sacramento Shelter Pets Alive (SSPA). In 2018, we implemented a full-time behavioral team and the live outcome for dogs at Sacramento County’s open-admission municipal shelter was 93%, and 94/95% when we left at the close of 2020.
Then we started supporting Stockton Animal Shelter, a high-intake facility that is underfunded and under-resourced that desperately needed a support system for large-breed dogs. Our staff provided innovative, comprehensive behavioral and rehabilitative programs including critical playgroups, foster care and rescue support, communications support, and adoption retention, all of which proved to sustain a high live outcome alongside a dedicated and compassionate team of volunteers.
This year, we opened our Sacramento facility as a playgroup and training facility to support our community’s dogs in need and their families – while continuing to be a safety net for shelter dogs. We offer donation-based services in our effort to make them accessible to all in need.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Getting my certification as a Certified Professional Dog Trainer to truly understand the “what,” “why” and “when” for assessing and addressing behavioral challenges within challenging environments, such as shelters.
2. Embedding play into all aspects of SSPA. Dog playgroups are magical, and developing the confidence and skillset to allow dogs to help each other is instrumental in positive outcomes and setting dogs up for success.
3. Within the dog world, we joke and say we enjoy dogs more than people and that’s why we do what we do. But you can not truly help dogs without helping people. The skillset of building relationships and valuing both dogs and their people is critical when developing any program that is focused on improving the lives of dogs.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
Our No. 1 challenge as a small nonprofit organization is funding. At SSPA, we are dedicated to dogs and their families: We offer donation-based training, guidance and playgroups services to ensure they’re accessible to those who need them most and help keep dogs out of overflowing shelters. Relying so strongly on donations, and understanding some who use our services cannot contribute, means it’s a tall order to ensure ends meet. Between our small but mighty behavioral-training staff, leasing and building out our site for the dogs, and maintaining the bare minimum to support our services, funding is critical to sustaining the organization. But as a small nonprofit trying to make a difference, we face huge hurdles in raising the funds we need, namely a large pool of nonprofits competing for funding, struggling to reach new donors, and lack of capacity to conduct major outreach or host big events. Honestly, anxiety over our ability to sustain our important services is constant. But, one silver lining: Being small, we have an invaluable group of steadfast supporters who truly understand and are passionate about our organization – and we are so very, very grateful for them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sspetsalive.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sac_shelter_pets_alive/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SSPetsAlive
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sacshelterpetsalive
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
