Animal Welfare Professionals

I volunteer at the Austin Animal Center and do a lot of the marketing for our longer-stay, more challenging dogs via Facebook, Nextdoor, etc. I understand the theory behind marketing versus counseling, but since the first question is inevitably always going to be - how is s/he with other dogs? - why not include that in the post to begin with? 

Including this information in the post can scare people off, even the ones who have no other pets and may be perfect for the dog. I remember thinking exactly that years ago when my husband and I were looking to adopt a dog-- I thought, well, my neighbor has a dog; will it be safe with a dog next door?  When someone hears, "no other dogs," they fill in the blanks themselves, and usually with the worst possible alternative. Say a dog is fine playing with other dogs outside the house but can't live with one. Just hearing "no other dogs," might cause them to fill in the blanks with, "this dog will hurt any other dog it gets near," which would make most potential adopters too wary to inquire further.

Marketing pets for adoption is all about making emotional connections, and caveats like that act as barriers to making that connection.  Once the connection is made and an inquiry takes place, you're able to have a 1-on-1 conversation with a potential adopter about what the issue really is, so they're not filling in the blanks and they have the information in context.

I've been there, and I know how time-consuming it can be to get inquiries that aren't going anywhere. The good thing is, most inquiries nowadays come in the form of email, which makes it really easy to create a template you send to potential adopters who, for example, tell you they have toddlers when the dog they're asking about isn't a good fit for kids. This way you can use the opportunity to introduce some other of your organization's dogs that ARE a great fit for their family and save yourself some time. We got several dogs adopted this way during the behavioral foster study in Fairfax.

Thanks, Kelly! I do have a follow up question. In social media (Facebook specifically) one of the first comments will be asking about their compatibility with other dogs. If I don’t answer, I’ve had people respond that I’m clearly hiding something from them. I’ve also DM’d people about a pet’s need to be the only pet, and then had my response copied and pasted into a comment for that post. So while I completely understand what you’re saying, and believe that often potential adopters could be deterred by this info without even meeting the dog, I worry that leaving it out altogether opens myself up to other issues. So, my question is - What do you do when someone asks you that in a post comment that others can see? 

Kayla, this is a really good question. Certainly, we want to keep the stop signs out of the original post. But the comments are a little bit of a different story. I've kind of been going back and forth over this myself in the past few months, because transparency is crucial-- if someone asks we need to tell them. An IM seems like it'd be the perfect way to do it...until someone posts a screenshot on your page and makes it look like you're withholding information. @KristenAuerbach what are your thoughts on this?