Writing Effective Petfinder Profiles

I got a lot of response from yesterday's post about the PetFinder profiles. Sadly, several people pointed out that these types of profiles are not unique to Kansas City -- or the fact that our shelter is going through a tough transition.  Writing negative bios has, unfortunately, become very commonplace.

As I was reading these, I was reminded of a video I watched a couple of years ago by Michelle Williamson.  Michelle's group, Pet Rescue in Australia, is very passionate about writing fun, positive bios for pets. They never allow them to use terms like "death row dog".  As she notes "People don't want to be bummed out, looking at the pages and pages of sad dogs they can't help. We want people to let their kids look through our pages for a new pet and for it to be something fun they can do together -- not having their 11 year old daughter in tears because she's looked into the eyes of a dog whose "due'" date has passed".

This is a great presentation on what they've learned from writing pet bios for adoptions. It's about 18 minutes long, but well worth the time spent. Go grab yourself a cup of coffee, a pen, and some paper and make a few notes because I guarantee you'll get at least one really good nugget from this.

 

Michelle Williamson - 2009 NDN Summit from PetRescue on Vimeo.

Comments

[Joel]

Speaking as a shelter volunteer, let me be the first to say that the number of dogs coming into a shelter can feel extremely overwhelming - and I volunteer at a shelter with an extremely low PTS rate (about 7%). No sooner do you get one adopted then three more arrive to take its place.

I certainly don't endorse the type of bio that has been featured here, but it's not surprising that it happens given the number of animals, the number of volunteers, and the PTS rate at some of these places. It's stressful for both dogs and humans, and at least a few results such as this are inevitable. We all know the shelter model needs to improve, no shock that the issues can manifest themselves in this way. People volunteer because they want to help animals. A desperate daily grind to keep them from being put down is not what they had in mind.

And as much as I hate the desperate pleas (Last day today!, Needs out now!), that approach seems to be the most effective, although I'm not convinced it leads to the best placements. Our shelter keeps things extremely positive in our networking, but will focus on why a particular dog needs to get out quickly to survive if the dog has kennel stress. And it usually works better than the positive stuff we put up for dogs that have been there for six months and are holding it together mentally.

[Brent]

Joel, in fairness, we all work at stressful jobs. There are always times in my professional work when there is more work coming in than I can deal with. It's stressful. It's overwhelming. And yet, there is never an excuse to do a bad job. It may not be "A" work, but it's "B" work. It's not "I'm stressed out and mailing it in" work. That would get me fired -- and pretty much anyone who works in any type of professional environement.

I will also not that outgoing communications to the public and those going to rescue contacts don't necessarily have to be the same. I think rescues get the "urgent" message differently than the generaly public. "Urgent" to the general public, takes the fun out of adoptions for sure...and we want adopting pets to be fun.

[Joel]

I agree with you Brent. Most of us have stressful jobs, and most of us deal with it fine. My point is that when you've got x thousand staff and volunteers nationally writing these bios, a certain percentage of them are going to let the stress come out in this fashion.

Your entry is dead-on about how to write the bios, and hopefully continuing to get the message out will cut down on the number of negative-sounding bios. I hope to never see another bio written like the ones you've posted. But we will likely always be able to find some written in this manner unfortunately.

Even at my shelter, with its low PTS rate, we occasionally have blog entries, Facebook posts, and bios written that reflect the stress that does occur, which get edited quickly. And unlike our jobs, most shelters just don't police this stuff internally (if they're not endorsing it, that is).