‘Maybe it’ll change somebody’s life’: Vancouver woman teaches unhoused dogs and their owners new tricks

Kim Monteith loves seeing the look on a person’s face when their dog learns a new trick.

The animal welfare manager at the BCSPCA has been doing outreach work in Vancouver for 24 years, helping people who live on the streets train their pets.

She says she feels lucky to be able to do the work she’s doing.

“It’s so rewarding to see people excited when their dog gets it without using force or any harsh training,” she said.

Monteith says she works with an average of two to three people per week, depending upon who approaches her.

“I don’t tell anybody, ‘You have to train your dog to do this.’ It’s more like ‘Hey, how’s it going? Do you need anything from me?'” she said.

“And then it’s kind of fun for me too because then I’ll ask if I can train their dog to do something myself, so that I can just build my skills.”

Recently, Monteith has been working with the Overdose Prevention Society in Vancouver to provide dog-training services to anyone showing up to their sites.

“It may be just chatting about their dogs or their cats, it may be them asking where they can get resources, or the last few times, it’s been a lot of training and which is a lot of fun.”

She says little things like teaching a dog to be comfortable putting on a harness, to not eat strange things off the street, or to handle well in a large crowd are important for unhoused people who may spend a lot of time outside or in a crowded shelter.

One of Monteith’s favourite memories is teaching a dog who just had surgery to wear its cone. She says the dog was living on Hastings Street with its owner and he needed to wear a cone to prevent him from licking his surgical wounds.

Despite the dog’s initial resistance, Monteith says within a couple of minutes they had the dog willingly putting its head into the cone.

“Then we had a little crowd watching and we had some of the Vancouver police stop and watch too,” she said.

“And then I was like ‘Hey,’ to the owner. ‘We should get this guy to help us. He’s like, ‘Yeah,’ so we got the VPD to help us do some of the training. It was really cool to see (everyone) learning together.”

Once she finishes working with someone, Monteith says she can tell they’re often very proud of what they’ve accomplished.

“They should be proud. It’s a skill,” she said.

For the dogs, Monteith says she thinks it gives them a sense of predictability in a chaotic situation, when someone can just say “go lie down” or “sit” and they know exactly what to do.

Everyone (and their pet) deserves respect

Even if a person is living on the street with their pet, Monteith says it’s important to remember everybody deserves to be treated with respect, which includes asking before giving a dog a treat.

“Some people think, ‘Oh, you’re living outdoors or on the street and I should just be able to give your dog a treat.’ That’s not true,” she said.

“You have to still show people respect and that’s because maybe their dogs have allergies, maybe they just don’t want them taking from strangers, or they don’t want them to learn to take something off the ground because it could be a death sentence for them.”

In the future, Monteith says she wants to help more people in downtown Vancouver catch the “training bug.”

“Maybe it’ll change somebody’s life and they’ll want to start doing this, or providing this for their community.”