Lisa M Gunter

PeerJ Author

Summary

Lisa is the Maddie's Fund Research Fellow at Arizona State University in the Department of Psychology and conducts her research in the Canine Science Collaboratory with Clive Wynne. Before beginning her graduate studies, she worked for nearly a decade with dogs in animal shelters. The goal of Lisa's research is to better the lives of shelter dogs. To this aim, she has investigated the perceptional influence of breed labels, what breeds and breed mixes are present in animal shelters, post-adoption interventions focused on owner retention, temporary fostering of dogs awaiting adoption, and identifying behavioral indicators of welfare for kenneled dogs.

Animal Behavior Veterinary Medicine

Past or current institution affiliations

Arizona State University

Virginia Tech

Work details

Maddie's Fund Research Fellow

Arizona State University

July 2018

Psychology

In this role, I’m overseeing the national deployment and evaluation of fostering programs across the United States with 100 participating animal shelters. Given the scope of this multi-year project, I also manage staff, graduate and undergraduate students. The overarching aim of this study is to learn more about how fostering programs affect dogs awaiting adoption (e.g. adoption success and length of stay) as well as the morale of staff and volunteers at these shelters. We’ll be studying the impacts of three types of fostering: field trips: a few hours out of the shelter, sleepovers: a night or two away from the shelter, and longer-term fostering: stays in a foster home of a week or longer. We will also be evaluating three types of training that staff in these animal shelters will be receive about the foster program they will be implementing.