For Animal Organizations

From Adoption Police to Adoption Counselors

Wayside Waifs in Kansas City, Missouri has made a lot of changes in eighteen months.

Vice President of Operations, Kim Staton, has overseen many of them. "Our complaint rate used to be high. We'd hear: 'It's too hard to get an animal.' 'Your staff was rude and we weren't treated well.' And, the fact of the matter is, we used to act more like adoption police than adoption counselors. We had a page and a half long adoption form that was so unrealistic, that many of our own staff wouldn't have qualified. Some shelter workers felt anger towards adopters or felt they were the enemy. Then we decided to re-examine our adoption policies and work on customer relations. We started talking about the need to educate our adopters and to think of people as basically good, not irresponsible. We pointed out that if we treated people poorly and made them mad or defensive, we lost the opportunity to influence their behavior. At the same time, we implemented a program called 'Meet Your Match' by Dr. Emily Weiss, Applied Animal Behaviorist, to help match pet and adopter in a more objective and educational way.

We started doing more education through follow-up phone calls, an animal behavior help line and free dog training classes. We worked on publicity. We enlisted a volunteer greeter to welcome people and started offering free coffee and hot chocolate in the shelter lobby.

As a result, adoptions have soared and complaints have dropped. In January and February 2003, we did 366 adoptions. Over the same two month period this year, we found homes for 681 dogs and cats. Last month alone (March 2004), we placed 370 pets in good homes—an all time record for Wayside Waifs. Needless to say, our changes have been very well received."