Many of us dedicate our time and resources to helping dogs, and the communities they live amongst, through humane population management. But how do we know we are making a difference? This is a question that the ICAM Coalition felt was extremely important. If we can assess our interventions objectively we can learn what works and what needs improving and hence get better at the job of helping animals. Further, if we can demonstrate positive impact on dogs and people, we can lobby for the resources to sustain and expand our interventions.
So how do we find out if our intervention is having the impact we hoped for? This is where the ICAM Coalition’s most recent guidance can help; ‘Are we making a difference? A guide to monitoring and evaluating dog population management interventions’. The full pdf document is long, as it had to include all the impacts that interventions around the world are aiming for, but most of us only have a few impacts in mind. So there is also an online navigation tool, this asks a series of short questions about your dogs and your intervention, it then creates a tailored document based on the answers. The result is much shorter and bespoke guidance. There are also a couple of tools available to help you learn and test yourself on body condition scoring, one of the recommended indicators of dog welfare.
Want to learn more? There is also a narrated presentation describing the content of the guidance for you to sit back and listen to.
We hope you enjoy these guidelines and would very much value hearing your feedback, so please do contact us on info@icam-coalition.org with any thoughts or suggestions.
