Animal Welfare Professionals

Our organization is strictly foster based and primarily felines due to the difficulty we have finding foster homes for bully breeds, the dog most in need of rescue from our city shelter. We find it very difficult to adopt the few bully breeds we do have out of foster homes, which I can only surmise is for the following reasons, 1). Our adoption fee for dogs is $200 (spayed/neutered, vaccinated, heartworm tested, microchipped).  The city shelter charges only $65 and has over 100 bullies at any given time to chose from.  Our BOD is against reducing the fee.  2) Adopters looking for a bully breed are much less likely to want to go to meet one dog in a foster home when they can go to the city shelter and choose from over 100.  

We are currently brainstorming to try to come up with new and creative ways to market our bully breed dogs to increase their chances of adoption in a more timely manner rather than the many months it is now taking. I would sincerely appreciate input on my thoughts on the reasons for the difficulty we are having and suggestions on ways to increase adoptions.

Hi! I run The Hansel Foundation, a nonprofit focusing on grants to support bully breed rescue and advocacy. Thank you so much for your commitment to finding homes for the house hippos!

I think social media is key. Hopping on viral video trends with trending audio and formats in creative ways to highlight your dogs, as well as asking everyone in your org to share, share, share, is big. I discover so many great dogs in need and new orgs to work with through social media. 

I also think it's important to highlight the dogs as individuals and what makes them special. Sure, the city shelter has over 100 bully breed pups, but they don't have THAT dog who does that silly face or trick or move with his toy or has that unusual favorite treat. Maybe you're already doing this, but I'd also opt for just saying "mixed breed" on your adoption listings when breed isn't 100% known, because even though you and I know pit bulls are awesome, dogs with that label tend to take longer to get adopted - and much of the public doesn't understand that "pit bull" is a term that refers to multiple breeds and their mixes. 

So I totally understand your question and internally and among others in the field, yup, we can and should talk about bully breeds. But for your purposes, I would talk about them as individuals as much as possible, without breed labels!

You could also look into grants/donations to sponsor or subsidize adoption fees, so the money would be coming in but your adopters wouldn't have to pay as much or at all.