I have a lot of admiration for people who can take good pet pictures. When I got my digital camera last holiday season, I had visions of all sorts of sugarplum pictures of my 'family circle' Unfortunately, as soon as Miss Ruby hears the whirrr of the camera as it turns on, the best I can hope for are some really stellar shots of her bloomers as she heads down the hall to the safety of her toddler bed.
And of course, like all rookies, I'm still trying to get a feel for the timelapse between aiming the camera and catching the shot: ))) So I tend not to be very critical of the pictures on petfinder.
Judging by my personal experience with the site traffic for the homeless site, I can definitely say that it is a virtual world for many hopeful pet adopters. The beauty of petfinder is that it allows the opportunity for anyone using the service to give very detailed descriptions with two or three pictures .... hey it even offers the ability to post videos of each of the adoptables.
The small private rescues really have a handle on using Petfinder. Anyone browsing will get detailed descriptions, which are often written by the fosters who know them first hand. Nor is the basic pertinent info ever left to guesswork because the little groups understand that whether a pet is house trained, vaccinated and altered can play a big role in the decision making process.
Unless the pets are already spoken for with a preapproved adoption, their adoptables are all posted in a timely fashion. Nor do the pets 'linger' on petfinder after they are adopted.
In the course of any given day, all the petfinder and private web sites ( the ones without too many bots that it) are checked at least twice for updates. Normally a group will have a couple added in here... one or two adopted there. Even groups that don't fuss with their bios and details pretty much do business like that.
Except the Cape Breton SPCA. Now in the (we hope ) old days with the gas chamber, after they were told to list their adoptables, they would list a few youngsters every three or four weeks. Then one day, I would check and they'd all be gone: ((( In a few days, or weeks, another few would be listed. Then one night they would all disappear and the cycle would start again.
Last winter, I was overjoyed to find out that instead of the worst, the site 'emptied' out because they were brought back to Metro after a site visit by the BOD.
Just before the election, we started up the Pet Transfer network to try to make this a regular thing.... but for reasons best left unmentioned, the first run was the only one that flew ... at least through the network.
Now I understand that between the old blog and this one, that I've burned a lot of bridges with some. So, eventually, I did close the old network, because it simply couldn't work without communicating.
Hopefully its still continuing .... and as far as I'm concerned that's far more important than whether I'm part of the process. Because the dogs are still coming off the Cape Breton SPCA petfinder site all at once. Then I'll post a note on their spot on the front door of the homeless pet site that there are no listings available, and after a bit another crew will pop up.
Once again with no information about the basics.... although in the last group that was listed did mention a tidbit about one dog 'only having three legs but 'gets around fine': )))
According to last years statistics, the Cape Breton branch took in 1522 dogs for the calendar year, which works out to an average of 29 dogs a week. Even if you subtract all the dogs that were claimed by their owners and all the dogs that were killed, it still works out to at least 15 dogs a week. So how is it that they are listing ten dogs every three or four weeks. Next years stats should make interesting reading indeed.
In the meantime, working with other shelters and rescues to save lives is the type of postive pr that the society should be shouting from the rooftops ... ie SPCANS is proud to announce that X number of pets were saved by transferring them to Metro and other cooperative shelters
What time is it? I don't think its time to jump the gun, but its definitely not time to break out the champagne yet either.
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