Is It Better To Adopt Pets Online?

This afternoon I watched the Puppybowl had the Puppybowl on in the background while I did homework. I wasn’t giving it my total attention but I couldn’t help but notice that Petfinder.com has a lot of advertisements. If you don’t know, Petfinder.com is basically an online pound —but you can also adopt dogs, horses, birds. You can browse potential pets from around the country and pick one you like.

I have mixed feelings about Petfinder. On the one hand, it makes the scope of rescuable dogs much, much larger. On the other hand, it also emphasizes the appearance of the dog (or cat). That’s not to say that looks aren’t a part of going to the pound and picking an animal out from there. It is. But you also have the chance to interact with the animal in person and compare that interaction immediately with other animals.

Petfinder also “conveniently” lets you search for the right dog by breed. So if I want a Border Collie, I can look at rescue dogs that have at least some Border Collie blood in them. I think there’s a problem here too. There’s no pleasant surprise possibility here. If I went to the Pound, Border Collie in mind, but found a dog that I really liked that just happened to not be part Border Collie, I’d probably get it. Petfinder doesn’t allow for that. But it does allow for a person to get very interested in the dog, go to meet it and probably get it, then be disappointed by its behavior or some other reason though. So all of the bad but none of the good.

Finally, the entire existence of the site distracts from the fact that there are no good, needy dogs at the local pound which is just plain false.

Look, there’s a lot good about Petfinder. As I said, the site makes a lot more dogs eligible to be rescued. I’m just skeptical that more dogs/cats/birds/horses are actually saved because of Petfinder.

–Daniel Strauss

(Crossposted)