HOUSTON – For many families ready to adopt a dog or cat, the search starts on Petfinder, an online platform that lists adoptable pets from shelters and rescues nationwide. But several Houston-area rescue groups say a recent change to Petfinder’s search filters is making their animals harder to find and is already cutting into adoptions.
Suzanne Schaefer, director of administration for Three Little Pitties Rescue, said her organization previously depended on out-of-town visibility to connect animals with adopters in other markets.
“Previously, we were able to show out-of-town pets in our 32 markets across the United States. They took that ability out and now our pets are not showing up,” Schaefer said.
Schaefer said Petfinder still allows users to include transport-ready animals, but the option is easy to miss.
“Now, there is a box at the bottom that people can check to say I want to see out of town pets, but people don’t know to do that,” she said.
Schaefer said the result has been a steep drop in adoption interest.
“Our adoptions have trickled from 35 to 40 applications a day down to five applications a day. We have about 950 animals in our program and really no place to send them right now,” she said.
Schaefer said that slowdown is forcing difficult operational decisions, including pausing community outreach that provided free spay-neuter services and vaccines for owned animals in underserved areas. She also said the rescue has had to stop taking in additional animals.
“We have had to close intake, which means we are not taking animals from our street rescuers, nor are we able to take animals in from shelters,” Schaefer said.
Other Houston-area rescues say they are seeing similar impacts.
Angelique Strickler, founder of Waiting Under the Willow Foundation, said: “Recent changes to Petfinder have had a devastating impact on rescue groups and shelters, leading to a significant decrease in adoptions. This ripple effect is resulting in more dogs dying on euthanasia lists and on the streets as rescues are forced to close intake.”
Tammy Livingston with Belle’s Buds Rescue said: “I think we definitely are missing out on people looking to adopt… and it’s a shame… especially out of state adopters.”
In response, Petfinder said the change was driven by user feedback and that out-of-town pets can still be included by selecting a checkbox in the filters.
Petfinder’s statement from Petfinder: “We strive to provide the best user experience on Petfinder by regularly reviewing feedback from adopters and shelter and rescue partners. One of the top user complaints we received over the past year was that local searches included out-of-town pets by default, which confused potential pet adopters seeking nearby adoptions. Based on this feedback, we recently updated the site so only local pets appear in searches initially, while still allowing users to include out-of-town pets at any time by selecting a simple checkbox to ‘Include out-of-town pets that can be transported to your area’ in the search filters.”
Sunnyside Street Dogs said the update has been especially disruptive for groups that place most animals out of state through transport adoptions. The organization said: “Here at Sunnyside Street Dogs, most of the dogs that we have are adopted out of state. We rely on Petfinder to get these dogs into their furever homes across the United States so that they have a better chance of getting adopted. When Petfinder did the update it caused several problems, but one if the biggest problems is that people that are out of state cannot see the adoptable dogs that are available for transport to their state unless they check a box that says ‘Include out-of-town pets that can be transported to your area.’ This problem, along with many others, has halted not only our adoptions, but all rescues that rely on Petfinder to adopt out their dogs. We have called, emailed, sent online request, and no one is reaching out to us. This is devastating to our rescue because without dogs being adopted, we have to close our intake and can’t help the many other dogs that are out on the streets that still need our help. Our adoptions went from 5 to 15 per week down to 1 or two per week, and with all of the rescues having the same problem there are hundreds of dogs every week that are not being adopted.”
Some local shelters said the change is not affecting how they complete adoptions.
Harris County Pets said: “Harris County Pets is aware of recent changes to search features on Petfinder. At this time, these updates do not significantly impact our adoption process. Harris County Pets requires all potential adopters to visit the animal in person at the Harris County Pets Resource Center before completing an adoption. Because in-person visits are required, our adoption operations are not dependent on out-of-town search functionality. We encourage community members to continue visiting our shelter or viewing adoptable animals on our website, countypets.com , to learn more about adoptable pets currently in our care.”
BARC also said the change is not impacting its shelter.
Rescues that rely heavily on transport adoptions say the checkbox may be simple, but they believe many adopters never reach it, and they say the drop in visibility is already translating into fewer applications and fewer animals getting out of the system.