More than 70 people involved in animal adoptions and animal rescue filled the Kanza Room at Emporia State University Sunday for the Petfinder.com Adoption Options Tour held by Petco.
The tour is traveling across the United States and was hosted by The Rockin’ Paw Rescue & Adoption Network Inc. out of Parsons. Saturday evening, Rockin’ Paw held an animal advocate coalition meeting to network.
The weekend’s event drew people from across Kansas and some from Nebraska. On Sunday the large group settled in to learn about adoption options, how to market homeless pets and how to conduct successful fundraisers. The event was for animal welfare professionals and advocates. Several nationally known speakers described the Petco Foundation and discussed marketing pets online, grassroots fundraising, adoption strategies and training shelter dogs to make them more adoptable.
The first speaker up was Paul Jolly, executive director of the Petco Foundation. Jolly is the decision-maker for all the grants the foundation gives out. He started at Petco when there were only three stores; now there are 950 stores in 50 states. Petco was founded in 1965. The foundation was created in 1999. About $50 million is donated each year across the country to support the efforts of animal welfare organizations.
The Petco Foundation operates from the four R’s: rescue, rehabilitate, rejoice and reduce by spaying and neutering pets. Those seeking funds have to apply for them and become a Petco Partner. The Petco Foundation also stands behind Petco’s in-store fundraisers, which organizations also can apply for. This includes the Tree of Hope, which is for all animal welfare groups.
The foundation also does donations of products sold in Petco’s stores.
Betsy Saul, founder of Petfinder.com, spoke to the group Sunday. She talked about the advantages of using Petfinder.com to market pets to potential adoptees. More than 5.5 million people a month visit the Web site, which lists pets from around the country that are in shelters or foster homes waiting to be adopted. Each adoption organization has a home page that directs potential adoptive families to pets that are nearest them. Saul told the group that the average user visits about four times a month and during that month views about 90 pets.
Saul offered many tips to the audience including how to market pets. Pets with pictures get looked at more. Pets with lively descriptions also get more than one look. Pets who are dressed up or have creative photos are looked at even more and may even get e-mailed from one person to another. Names of pets make a difference as well.
“You want to make sure you can see the pet,” Saul said. “Having pictures gets your pet looked at 22 times more.”
Dogs with calming names are viewed as more adoptable. A pet named Daisy gets more looks than a pet named Tasmanian.
Saul offered many facts for the group including what it would take to become a no-kill nation in the shelters.
“We only need to adopt three million extra pets this year to be a non-kill nation,” she said, adding that 5.5 million visitors view the Petfinder.com web site each month.
For more information on Petco go to www.petco.com. For more information on Petfinder go to www.petfinder.com.