The "Shut Up Dogs"

Meet precious, Hadley, Otter , Doodle ,
Dale , Jammer, Moona , Pammy , Mikki and Fudge . I pretty much know their names by heart because I see them at least a couple of times a day when I'm checking around for site updates.

Its not unusual for a few dogs to be listed for a while with any of the No Kill Shelters and groups around the province. In some cases, like Chase at the No Kill TLC Animal Shelter, their sweet selves can wait for a year or more until the right and Forever Home comes along. But while Chase has been waiting, other dogs have come and gone through the TLC Animal Shelter .... which is the normal way of things.

Anyone who has read this blog, or the old one knows that, like a stuck record, I can go on and on about the virtues of Petfinder . It has a proven track record of boosting adoptions. Its a well known service that is popular with potential adopters. And of course, best of all, it is free. All that is needed is for the group or shelter to invest a bit of time to do pictures and writeups.

There are some very creative and funny writeups out there. IMHO, CAPS deserves a very special mention - on any given day they have well in excess of 100 adoptables, yet each and every one of them has a good listing. ( I define good as having at least one picture and containing all the pertinent info that potential adopters need to know - age/a bit of history and more importantly .... whether the pet is already house trained, vaccinated and altered)

For a long time, ARC and NS Labrador Rescue. definitely took the prize for humour .... although lately the Metro Shelter bios have definitely stepped up quite a few notches. Besides being well written, S.H.A.I.D 's bios often include an appealing video of the pet as well.

Now what do these ten dogs pictured here have in common? All ten are listed on the Cape Breton SPCA Petfinder page. Their predecessors all came off the site at the same time, a day or two before these ten were listed. If they follow true to form, some evening when I'm doing a last round of checks, all ten will disappear off the site at once, leaving me to sadly speculate. Then ... unless the pattern changes .... in a day or two ten more dogs will be listed for roughly another month.

So I have started calling the petfinder listings for the Cape Breton SPCA the "Shut Up Dogs" They're only there to satisfy the minimal requirement set out by the new provincial board. And perhaps to shut me up.

They're not there to get adopted. If they were .... even if it wasn't cleverly written, each bio would include the pets age and whether they were housetrained/vaccinated and / or altered.

I'll be the first to admit that it must be a challenge to find adopters when the CBRM is so far off the beaten track. But that's the beauty of Petfinder .... it opens up a whole new set of possibilities because the people who visit Petfinder are normally looking to adopt. In other worlds, its a free service that already has the target audience.

I'll be the first to admit that with the price of gas, adopters are probably thinking twice before travelling there. Would that not be all the more reason to invest a wee bit of time and energy into the Petfinder bios? All we know, this month, is that Precious is "very strong . loves to ride in cars " Moona seems like a lovely quiet dog, but there is absolutely no information whatsoever about her. Are any of them playful? Should they have obedience? Would they be suitable for a family with children? Do they get along well with the other dogs? With cats?

If the shelter was in a more central location, interested adopters could go see for themselves. But its three and half hours to the city, where well over half of Nova Scotia's population resides. In most cases, its going to take more than a picture to inspire a potential adopter to make the seven hour + round trip.

Here in the real world, there is another fringe benefit to boosting adoptions. Animal lovers are generally squeamish about volunteering to help in a high kill shelter. As adoption rates improve, other groups elsewhere have found that both volunteers and donations have increased remarkably. In other words, the better they do the better they do.

What time is it? With rising gas prices and more job losses on the horizon, its time to use Petfinder listings to let the animals speak to potential adopters, and not to shut up the critics.