Animal Welfare Professionals

Greetings,

Any fine folks have advice on handling demand for puppies/highly sought-after breeds and who gets "first dibs"? Thanks to successful spay/neuter and lack of breeders in our service area it's rare we have a litter surrendered and they tend to have holds placed on them before they are available for adoption to the public. We want to offer a perk to staff for "first look" but it stretches to volunteers, friends, neighbors, etc...

Any suggestions/experience welcomed!

Not sure where you are from, but I'm in Texas and we always seem to have an overabundance of puppies and we struggle to get folks to spay/neuter, in part because in rural  and low income areas there is often little access to low cost spay neuter and so folks see it as unaffordable. 

Have you considered being a receiving shelter for puppies/desirable breed dogs from overcrowded shelters in the southern states?  If you can adopt them out, we'd sure love to send them to you!  Feel free to message me! 

We evaluate all prospects and usually adopt to the home that is the best fit for the dog.  If there are several best fits- we adopt on a first come/first served basis. 

Liz K- LARAS House in Mexia, Texas  and also doing some independent rescues on occasion. 

Thanks to everyone who replied. We have decided to allow only fosters to have first dibs and all others must wait until the pet is officially made available to place a hold

And thanks for the offer for puppies! We have connected with a regional partner that has litters available for transfer and will be bringing in as many as we have capacity for.

Thanks again for the advice!

So, I'm not sure what you mean by the last part, about the 'first look', but I think you should consider getting your entire shelter team together to brainstorm.  You certainly don't want to adopt pups out to substandard homes but you also don't want to extend LOS waiting for the 'perfect' home.  I think it would be fair to let all members of the community interested know when you have 'hot stuff' on the way--via Facebook, or your webpage, or what have you--and encourage them to fill out an application in advance.  You can try a hold fee for revenue generation if you're not already; it might help weed out people who aren't actually ready to adopt, if that's been an issue.

Otherwise, I think it would be great to partner with areas where puppies are overabundant.  Transporting can be easier than it seems at first and there are a lot of already-extant programs with published best practices for you to build on.  If you have a demand in your area, why not try to fill it?  Especially if people in your area are willing to adopt bully breed or hound mix puppies--those are the ones we struggle sometimes to place.  Anything else is usually a cinch in our area, too.

We give staff members priority when it comes to adoptions but they need to make up their mind in a hurry.  When puppies arrive, we take their pictures and post them to our Facebook page.  We get applications in for them based on that post alone.  Staff members need to get a hold of me ASAP if they want a puppy.  When it comes to their families and friends, we tell our staff members to get their families applications in right away and to make sure they make mention of the staff member they know.  We don't sit and wait for family and friends to show up though as once the applications start coming in from the public, we start approving them right away.  While it's not necessarily first dibs, we are ready to start reviewing as soon as the pictures are posted so their chance of getting a puppy is better than someone that needs to take a couple of days to think it over.  We keep applications on file for 3 months as we do transport puppies in from southern states so if it doesn't work out to get a puppy from the current litter, there will be more on the way.  These people do get priority with the next bunch as we'll have already have gone over their application.  But, even with priority, they need to be watching our Facebook page and let me know ASAP when they see one they like.  I do not contact anyone specifically about what is coming in, just tell people to follow our page closely.  All puppies are spayed/neutered prior to adoption which can cause a week or so wait on pick up.  We have been having issues with people backing out last minute on adoptions as they'll find a puppy elsewhere during that spay/neuter wait so we are reviewing whether we should have holds at all.  But, for now, we're going to continue as we are as we are in a remote location with limited open hours so it can be difficult for adopters to get here during the week.

As a municipal shelter we give the public the first opportunity. However if our employee is not working that day they have equal opportunity to be the first member of the public to adopt it. We do actually charge a premium for high demand dogs (and some cats). Our normal adoption price is $20 but with these high demand pets we allow a "pre-adopt" as the pet comes into the shelter for $140. The adopter has to wait the hold period and owners may reclaim in that time. It actually has increased our revenue for adoption substantially and we have not gotten any push back in our community.

There hundreds or cute, friendly rescued puppies in Puerto Rico waiting to be flown up North, where they can be adopted out to loving homes. For more info, check out the Facebook page for Huellitas Piratas (Pirate Paws).