Happy Valentine’s! We are spreading the love of pet adoption to more people and pets every month, to help shelters and rescues like you get more pets adopted! If you need assistance with any of our features, please email me at jennifer@adoptapet.com

***

A new look for Adopt-a-Pet.com!

Last week we launched a new look for many parts of the Adopt-a-Pet.com website! While our original website’s design, with the wonderful celebrities that lent their faces to further the pet adoption cause, served homeless pets well for the past decade, it was time for an update. The new design of our home page, navigation menu, and pet pages makes it easier for potential adopters to search and see your pets on their desktop, phone, or tablet — to help you get more pets adopted.

Some important things have NOT changed:

• Pet search results are exactly the same. We did not touch the pet database with this redesign.
• Your shelter/rescue admin area. (For now! We know many of you have asked for changes – we will be rolling out new features later this year.)

Coming up later this year, we’re excited about launching some of the new features you’ve requested too!  Thank you to everyone who tried out the new design on our beta preview site earlier this month, and gave us your feedback. We really appreciate it!

***

New: Dog breed information for adopters

Millions of potential adopters come to Adopt-a-Pet.com every month as part of their pre-adoption research process. To help educate future dog parents and better prepare them to make lifetime matches, with the help of some wonderful dog breed rescue experts, we created a library of dog breed information for potential adopters! Our “What Dog Breed is Best for You?”  also lets adopters know that they don’t need to feel like breed selection is the ultimate key to finding their perfect match. It’s about the individual pet’s personality and the chemistry. But for those adopters researching the characteristics of dog breeds, they can now get not just physical traits, but helpful quotes from rescuers telling them what’s the most important thing to know about a particular breed. The information can be helpful for your staff and volunteers too! Check it out at  http://www.adoptapet.com/dog-breeds

***

Something sweet to share on Valentine’s Day

You’re already using the super-easy-to-click Facebook “share” button on your adoptable pets’ pages, or from the “promote” drop-down next to their name on your Pet List, right? Did you know that when you share something on your Facebook page that gets a lot of likes and shares, it helps your future posts (i.e. your adoptable pet shares) get seen by even more people? So here’s our Valentine to you: a fun graphic you can share with your Facebook fans that was a huge hit with ours! We hope it gets you a lot of likes and shares, so your future pet shares will too.

You can right-click to save the image above, or share from our Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/1elF9k2

***

Purina continues to help homeless dogs and cats

Our friends at Purina® Pets for People continue to help remove barriers to adoption by changing perceptions of shelter pets!

One way that Purina supports shelters is through partnerships with Shelter-Me Photography and the Shelter Arts Foundation.  These organizations are dedicated to training shelter staff and volunteers to get the very best photo of every pet that is available for adoption.  You can learn more about this effort at www.meettherealme.org.

 

****

And, of course… As always, we thank the wonderful, pet-loving people at Purina and Bayer Animal Health for supporting all of us in our mission and making Adopt-a-Pet.com a free service!