We’re happy to announce the 2013 Adopt-a-Pet.com Happy Beginnings Fund! Thanks to compassionate folks like you who are participating in our social media fundraising campaign, we are raising funds to provide up to 15 grants of $1,000 each. Tweet to save pets here. From June 15, 2013 through September 21, 2013, one grant of $1,000 will be awarded each week. 

.	Already have an Adopt-a-Pet.com shelter account? Apply starting June 15! (You must have an Adopt-a-Pet.com shelter account to apply, see below.)
	Don’t have an Adopt-a-Pet.com shelter account yet? It’s easy to sign up! (You are eligible to apply for a grant after your account is approved.)

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We’ve been busy bees behind the scenes adding all these new features and making Adopt-a-Pet.com the best it can be to help you find pets homes. If you need help or have a feature request, I’d love to hear from you at jennifer@adoptapet.com. Now, on to your Adopt-a-Pet.com news for April!

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New feature: Your adopted pets are now visible to the public

Over the years, we’ve had many requests to allow you to showcase your adopted pets to your supporters and potential adopters. Now you can choose to if you’d like your adoptedpets be visible or invisible to the public!  To keep them visible, no action is needed – just leave the box checked on the top of your Adopted Pets page (to make them invisible, just uncheck the box): http://www.adoptapet.com/cgi-bin/shelter/pet-reports.cgi/adopted_pets_form

You can find a direct link to your adopted pets here, in case you want to post it on your own site or in your communications: http://www.adoptapet.com/cgi-bin/shelter/index.cgi/listing_links

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New feature: Pet List API 

Do you have a website programmer or advanced coding skills? You asked for it, we added it: a Pet List API for JSON or XML. The API is code that allows you to create a highly customized list of your adoptable pets or a pet search on your website. Here’s how: http://www.adoptapet.com/shelter/portable_pet_list_api

Of course, even without any technical skills, you can still use our easy copy-and-paste pet list generator tool to add your adoptable pet list to your website: http://www.adoptapet.com/shelter/portable_pet_list/create

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Come see us at the Animal Care Expo in Nashville

We’re looking forward to meeting many of you at the Expo! Come by our booth #604 in the exhibit hall to meet some of our team: David, our co-founder and President, Dana, our Director of Marketing, Pia, our spokesperson, and Jennifer, our Director of Shelter Outreach. We’ll be there May 8th, 9th, and 10th. Hope to see you there!

We believe that having a seal of credibility on your website from an outside source like Adopt-a-Pet.com may help in your adoptions and possibly even your donations! So we created these badges of approval for shelters and rescues who have passed our initial screening process and been approved for Adopt-a-Pet.com account.

If someone clicks the badge on your website or blog, it will take them to our home page showing that we are an outside organization adding credibility to you. Or, if you want to link the badge directly to your pet list, type over the http://www.adoptapet.com in the code with any of your pet list links here. We appreciate the link, as it not only gets your pets seen, but helps all Adopt-a-Pet.com pets get seen more as it helps all our pet pages rank higher in search engine results!

(Shelter badges are first, Rescue badges are below that.)

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/011.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/021.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/031.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/041.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/051.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/061.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/071.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/081.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/01.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/02.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/03.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/04.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/05.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/06.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/07.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.adoptapet.com/images/shelter-badges/08.png" /></a>

<a href="http://www.adoptapet.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://shelterblog.adoptapet.com/uploads/2013/03/BunnyBadge.jpg" /></a>

• Send us a video testimonial!
• New feature: your “Adopted” and “Hidden” Pet Lists
• Coming soon: opt-in or -out of Adopted Pet List visibility
• New feature: QR Codes for your adoptable pets
• Purina continues to help feed homeless dogs and cats

You’ll notice that your “Adopted/On Hold” pet list has been renamed “My Adopted Pets” and that you can now mark your pets as “Adopted” – you asked for it, we listened!

You’ll also notice a new list: “My Hidden Pets.” Currently, both Adopted and Hidden pets are not visible to the public. (Only pets on your “My Pet List” are available for adoption and visible to the public.) In the future, we’ll launch the ability for you to opt-in or -out of having your Adopted Pets be visible to the public. Stay tuned!

Now on to your Adopt-a-Pet.com news for February!

This is how to add a clickable link to your pet’s description. You can use the same technique to add it to any of your Pet Description Templates too, if you use templates.

1. Log in to your Adopt-a-Pet.com shelter account.

2. Click Add Pet, or click on the pet’s name in your Pet List to edit the pet.

3. In the pet’s “Story / Description” box, copy or type this line of code exactly:

<A HREF=http://www.website.com>Click Here</A>

4. Very carefully type over the www.website.com with the link you want to use.

Example: You want to link to your online application, which let’s pretend is at www.adoptapet.com/index.html <- So your link code will now look like this:

<A HREF=http://www.adoptapet.com/index.html>Click Here</A>

in your pet listing it will look like this: Click Here

That’s it!

• A Look Back at 2012
• Launch of #ResolveToSolve Pet Homelessness
• Happy New Year Thanks to Purina® Dog Chow!
• Need Food Donations?

A Look Back at 2012

Wow what an incredible year it’s been for Adopt-a-Pet.com and the homeless pets in your care! First we’d like to extend a warm welcome to the 1,114 new shelters and rescues who joined Adopt-a-Pet.com this year, and a big virtual hug to the 11,272 shelters and rescues that make up our extended family. Thank you to all of you for everything you do to make this world a kinder place for homeless animals. We say it every year, but every year it is so true: You are truly heroes, and is it our greatest wish that Adopt-a-Pet.com makes your job easier.

We also want to thank our pet-loving friends at Purina and Bayer for their deep support of the animal welfare cause, and their constant desire to help us find new ways to support you in your work. Both companies put an impressive amount of resources and time into helping shelters in so many ways, and they are the primary reason Adopt-a-Pet.com can do what we do as a free service for you and to the public.

In 2012 Adopt-a-Pet.com continued to grow by leaps and bounds: unique visitors increased an incredible 30% to 2.6 million every month, our Facebook page audience exploded so exponentially – to over 150,000 likes – that I can’t even do the percentage math, and we added lots of new features! As is our annual tradition, we’ve recapped some of the highlights below.

• 2012 Veterinary Care Fund Grant Program - Thanks to compassionate fans who “liked” the Adopt-a-Pet.com Facebook page, we added $20,000 to our Veterinary Care Fund in 2012! We gave it all away in twenty $1,000 grants to Adopt-a-Pet.com shelters and rescues, for them to use to offset their veterinary cos ts. We’ll be doing another grant program in 2013.  Nothing makes us happier than supporting your great work. Details to come soon!
• Chicago Billboards - We ran a billboard campaign in Chicago that promoted a Pit Bull myth-busting campaign to change hearts and minds, start conversations, and encourage adoption of pit-bull type dogs as family pets.
• Media coverage - Adopt-a-Pet.com earned some great media coverage this year, which means we were able to bring more people to the site to see your pets!  Co-founder and president David Meyer appeared on CNN, as did spokesperson Pia Salk. Jane Velez-Mitchell has been mentioning Adopt-a-Pet.com every week on her HLN show. Our resident animal behaviorist, Katya Lidsky, made a number of media appearances, and executive director Abbie Moore was even interviewed during the radio broadcast of a Kansas City Royals’ game.  Look for Adopt-a-Pet.com to be even more in the public eye in 2013.
• PSA with a Baseball Superstar - To spread the word about shelter pets’ potential with help from a baseball superstar, we created a new public service announcement starring Marlins pitcher Mark Buehrle. We called it “Potential”, and you can see why: http://youtu.be/J78rBuvQnbU
• 40 Billboards in Miami - Our fifth regional pet-adoption campaign! We ran previous campaigns in Chicago, St. Louis, Phoenix, and Kansas City, and hope to be coming to your area in the future. With help from Mark Buehrle and John Buck of the Miami Marlins, this major pet-adoption campaign covered Miami with more than 40 billboards and two online public service announcements.  You can see the billboards and watch the PSAs here:
  http://blog.adoptapet.com/miami-sports-stars-helping-shelter-pets-score-homes
• Bonded Pairs - We added the ability for adopters to search for bonded pairs of pets by checking the “Part of a Bonded Pair” box on any of our search pages. Pets that are part of a bonded pair show up first in their search results, and other pets that match the rest of their search criteria show up below that. We also made it possible for shelters and rescues that AutoUpload their pets to use their online Pet List and check the “Part of a Bonded Pair” box to bond AutoUploaded pets too.
• Dog Training Videos - we now have a library of training videos on our YouTube channel, which are aimed at reducing relinquishment and helping adoptions to be more successful!
• Blog Search - Did you know that the main Adopt-a-Pet.com blog has 762 articles published? That’s a lot of content! While you’ve always been able to navigate by topic, we added a search box to make finding articles for your fosters and adopters even easier. You can find the search box near the upper right of our main blog page at http://blog.adoptapet.com and on every blog article page too. We also have a search on our Shelter Knowledge Center (aka Shelter Blog) where you can find even more help for your staff and volunteers: http://shelterblog.adoptapet.com/
• Better Password Security - Better security is always a good thing! That’s why we upgraded our “forgot password” tool, and why you and our staff can no longer see your passwords on your “My Pet Publicist Info” page.  Don’t worry, you can still change them, it’s just one small security measure we have put in place to keep your information safe.
• Multiple contacts - Here’s a feature we added because of your requests: you wanted to list different contact information for some of your pets…for example, if each foster parent in your organization is responsible for fielding inquiries about the pets in their care. So we added “Pet Contacts” you can use for any of the pets you list for adoption.  http://www.adoptapet.com/shelter/pet-contacts
• New Auto-Uploading software - Adopt-a-Pet.com added AutoUploading of adoptable pets from Shelter Exchange! Shelter Exchange lets shelters list animals in their care that they would like rescued by rescue organizations. Since Adopt-a-Pet.com is designed for pets who are available for adoption, we knew the Shelter Exchange tool could help shelters get the word out about shelters’ rescue-only pets, and pets that might be “less adoptable” by the general public. Adopt-a-Pet.com is always happy to help set up automatic uploading of pets if you use any database service or software, just email jennifer@adoptapet.com for assistance.

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You can find the full Abstract of the study here:

http://www.maddiesfund.org/Maddies_Institute/Articles/Adoptable_Ideas_2.html

Poster with summary of results (pdf file):
http://www.maddiesfund.org/Documents/Institute/Breed%20Stereotype%20Effects%20of%20Handler%20Appearance.pdf

Here’s an excerpt from the abstract we thought you’d find very helpful:

“Previous research has indicated that dog breed stereotypes exist and that the appearance of a human handler alongside a dog can affect perceptions of the dog’s temperament. The present study looked at participants’ perceptions of a Pit Bull-type dog in comparison to a Labrador Retriever and Border Collie, and whether the addition of a rough adult male, elderly woman or male child influences the dog’s perceived characteristics of approachability, aggressiveness, intelligence, friendliness, trainability or adoptability. The results indicated that participants viewed the Pit Bull least favorably in all six characteristics when evaluated with the other breeds, confirming the presence of a negative stereotype.  [[so pitbulls rank bad on a level playing field withother dogs which we know- but they can still rank better with a perosn inthe photo…]]]

The appearance of a handler alongside the Pit Bull influenced participants’ impressions of the dog on characteristics of aggressiveness, friendliness, approachability and adoptability. When comparing impressions of the Pit Bull alone versus alongside a handler, perceived intelligence improved across all three conditions. Additionally, perceptions of friendliness and adoptability increased, while aggressiveness decreased in both the elderly woman and male child conditions, and the perception of friendliness decreased with the presence of the rough male. These findings demonstrate how the appearance of a human handler in photographs can influence our perceptions of Pit Bulls and suggest possibilities for the use of human handlers to positively affect the perceived qualities of Pit Bulls among the general population and particularly those who are considering adopting a dog.”