Animal Welfare Professionals

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  • 1.  Adopt-a-pet Not Housetrained alert on all of our dogs.

    Posted 06-27-2022 10:42 AM
    Has anybody had problems with adopt-a-pet and potentially shelter buddy?  
    We do not upload our behavior evals into shelter buddy, instead print out a separate form that goes in the pet's hard file.  We do not utilize any of the icons (biter, no kids, cat friendly, etc.) instead we highlight personality in their bios and will mention any hard stops on there.  We had a successful adoption event this weekend. HOWEVER, though we had large dogs on "sale" we didn't get very many adoptions of our long stay larger dogs.  Checking the website, every single one of our dogs is marked "! Not Housetrained" on adopt-a-pet and while we make no guarantees one way or the other we think that might be why we haven't gotten any interest in our bigger dogs.  
    I'd hate to mark everyone housetrained and then have dogs go home and need to be taught.  I'd rather it not say anything and we can continue to counsel adopters on house training in appointments like we have been.
    Anyone else have this problem?
    #AdoptionsandAdoptionPrograms
    #Behavior,TrainingandEnrichment
    #DataandTechnology
    #MarketingandSocialMedia

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    Kirsten Lindsay
    Last Chance Ranch
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  • 2.  RE: Adopt-a-pet Not Housetrained alert on all of our dogs.

    Posted 06-27-2022 03:54 PM
    Did any of the dogs adopted have "Not house trained" in their bio? My first thought would be that it wasn't actually that they were marked as not house trained but rather because they are large adults, which is typically a less adopted population and adoption rates are so low right now. I think it's great that you highlight personalities in bios and don't use adoption barrier icons. I think a big reason people don't want to adopt large adult dogs is because they are worried about how they would be able to train them. Maybe you could highlight the training your bigger dogs have worked on or are working on. Maybe even try to find a local trainer who would donate a training session for anyone who adopts one of those pups?

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    Kenzie Whalen-Dunn
    Founder and Director
    Rescue Allies
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  • 3.  RE: Adopt-a-pet Not Housetrained alert on all of our dogs.

    Posted 06-28-2022 06:12 AM
    Nope, we keep that out of bios.  We don't guarantee any dog is housetrained even if we are fairly certain they are.  However we don't advertise that they AREN'T either.  There seems to be some sort of update between shelter buddy and adopt-a-pet that is causing any dog that doesn't have "housetrained" checked off in shelter buddy to be advertised as "Not Housetrained" and ironically none of the other behavior icons are checked and they don't default to coming up one way or another. 

    It's hurting our adoptions, I think.

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    Kirsten Lindsay
    Last Chance Ranch
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