Many animal shelters have an overabundance of high-energy, toy-obsessed dogs. While these qualities often make them unsuitable as house pets, these dogs are likely to thrive when they have a detection career. In order to maximize adoption rates for these dogs, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has teamed up with Working Dogs for Conservation (WDC) to form a new program Rescues 2the Rescue.

Rescues 2the Rescue aims to place high-energy dogs in careers and homes that complement their vitality. The program provides a platform for shelters and conservation detection dog organizations and trainers to connect and communicate, as well as standardized evaluation tools for assessing a canine’s potential to be a working dog.

“Our goal is to stem the tide of unadopted pets in US shelters and create rich and rewarding lives for canine partners,” said Pete Coppolillo, executive director, Working Dogs for Conservation. “Working with IFAW, we can have much larger impact on shelter populations, particularly those unadopted dogs with the potential to save themselves by leveraging their characteristics to start a new, productive life saving wildlife.”

Working dogs assist in conservation efforts by detecting otherwise hard to find wildlife and plants, identifying invasive species for eradication, finding direct threats to wildlife like illegal snares and poison, sniffing out illegal ivory and bushmeat and helping scientists gather wildlife population data.

“Conservationists and researchers in the field have long relied on working dogs to preserve wildlife and collect crucial data for conservation efforts,” Carson Barylak, campaigns officer, IFAW. “We are thrilled to partner with Working Dogs for Conservation to rescue dogs who will be invaluable partners in saving wildlife.”

To learn more about Rescues 2the Rescue, please visit Rescues2theRescue.org.