Yesterday, a dog training class was held by the registered volunteer of our animal control.
He arranged this class in his town and a professional trainer came to teach training voluntarily.
Now the people who want to learn training dogs are increasing, and I hope those project would be held in other towns or cities.

But... I think it's true that Japanese people are not good at dog training.
I guess they might not know the "proper timing" to give dogs "command" and "reward".
When the owners said "sit" and their dogs sit, many owners don't say their dogs "good" immediately, so their dogs would be bored and move around, then the owners say "No! Sit, sit!!" again, and their dogs won't hear the owners voice any more...

 This is the dog adopted from our center. She has been trained for 3 months and now has become a very smart dog!

Yesterday, I heard a phone call from a JR station official.
He said, "A stray dog has been chained in front of the station since this morning and no one has come to pick him up, so will you come and take him?"

It was already 5:00 pm and we were preparing for leaving the office, but I had to go to the station and pick up the dog.

When I got to the station, it was nearly 6:00 pm.
A man was there with the dog and the station official. He said, "It was me that chained this dog this morning. I found this dog on the way to the station, and I chained him because I was afraid he could be hit by a car. Then, I had to hurry up for work and got on the train."

This is the photo the man took in the morning. The dog is Shiba breed, and very friendly.

And this is the photo I took in the evening. He looks so nice sitting and waiting his owner.

The station official said "I thought this dog was a kind of HACHIKOU, waiting his owner patiently".
But unfortunately, his owner didn't come.
I think maybe his family is looking for him, because he was running with his chain, and he is very good, cute dog.

The man who chained him kindly walked with him to find the owner around the station for 30 minutes, but he couldn't find.
Many passengers came around to see the dog and said,
"Haven't your mother come yet?"
"I'm very sorry he can't go back home."
"I'll ask my neighbors if their dogs are running away." etc. etc...

Anyway, no one had come to pick him up, so I had to take him to our animal control center.
We'll keep him at least one week, but if the owner would not come to see him, then...!
.I hope he would be able to meet his family soon.

Yesterday, I visited a president of neighborhood community association of a town in Hikone city.
He asked us if there are some good ways to reduce stray cats around his area.
Now we hear those kinds of requests everyday. Sometimes there are a feeder to stray cats and the number of cats increase, making many troubles between the feeders and neighbors.

Actually, local government doesn't have any rules to regulatory those who feed stray cats, we don't have effective way to reduce stray cats and the troubles caused by them.
We used to tell people "Don't feed stray cats", but now we have realized that it doesn't work at all.
People who feed stray cats think they are poor, so they can't stop feeding. Then, those people would feed them secretly and problem would not disappear.

Now we recommend TNR in those case. This time I tried to explain him how TNR would work to solve the stray cats problems and to make both people and cats happy.

Fortunately, he was very kind to animals and said he would try to discuss about TNR with neighbors.
Then he said, "I adopted a dog from your animal control office 2 years ago." and showed the female dog, named "HANA (it means flower)".

HANA grew up a very cute dog and is trained well, I was very happy to see everyone in her family love her very much!