The Power of Social Media in Dog Adoptions

I thought Maggie was going to be a difficult adoption. Sure, she was cute and easy, but she also is old (about 10), needs a dental and has stinky breath, and has luxating patellas. On top of that, we were planning on adopting her directly from our home instead of from the shelter, so she would not be seen by people that were at the shelter to adopt a dog.

So that’s where Facebook came in.

Luckily, I work in the marketing department at our shelter and assist in running the Facebook page, so I took a cute picture of Maggie, wrote a nice description (really sweet, likes cats and dogs, housebroken…) and posted on our Facebook page with a message to email me (her foster mom) if someone was interested. I was hoping that maybe I would get one person interested and we could try to make an adoption happen.

The photo of Maggie that blew up Facebook.

What I did not expect that I would have a dozen emails within an hour (almost 50 after a few days…) and that her post would be shared more than 9,000 times and seen by almost 600,000 people! I guess I am not the only one with a soft spot for the seniors. Thanks to one Facebook post with the right picture and message, Maggie got adoption interest from all over the country (literally – someone from PA said they would drive up to get her and someone from Florida asked if we could fly her down…).

Because of her being in our home instead of the shelter, it took a little more time to go through adoption applications and do meet and greets, but it was worth it because Maggie found the PERFECT home. Rachel and her fiance have two other senior dogs, Mr. Shimmons (the adorable Maggie lookalike she’s holding in the picture) and Sammy. Maggie and the other two got along swimmingly right away (they basically just ignored each other, which is what you want from a first dog intro). If it had not been for the Facebook post, Maggie would likely still have no adoption interest and be basically “invisible” as a senior dog sitting in foster care.

Instead, later that same night I got a picture from Rachel of all three of the dogs passed out on the couch together, Maggie looking quite content and at home. I am so happy for our little old lady and I wish her and her new family many happy years together!

Today I’m participating in the “Thursday Barks and Bytes” blog hop… Check out the hosts at 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like a Dog.

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