Will we see you at the 2017 Annual Society of Animal Welfare Administrators (SAWA) Conference in Miami, FL, this weekend? The conference will run from November 12-15, with a Research Symposium Day on the 15th, sponsored by yours truly. Online registration is still open if you’re thinking about it, and they also accept walk-up registrations once… Learn More

In 2014, the Shelter Pet Project, an Ad Council public service advertising campaign promoting pet adoption and funded by Maddie’s Fund® and the Humane Society of the United States, conducted a research survey of 1,402 people to understand how to increase the number of pets acquired from animal shelters and rescue organizations. What can we… Learn More

Can a dog in your shelter benefit from just one sleepover with a foster? You bet, and we’ve got the research to back it up! A little over a year ago, Maddie’s Fund® gave a grant to Carroll College to answer that very question, funding the first sleepover pilot study at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary… Learn More

When cats stop using their litter box, and they get a clean bill of physical health from their veterinarian, there’s one piece of advice that almost universally comes next: Keep your litter box clean. But what does that mean from the cat’s point of view? The smell of a cat box is probably the main… Learn More

In the literature of persuasion, the act of buying jam turns out to have a lot to tell us about getting more pets adopted. We’ve written before about the so-called “paradox of choice,” and how research on jam sales as well as cat adoptions suggested that having fewer, rather than more, pets on the adoption… Learn More

Once shunned, no-fee pet adoptions have really come into their own. It was once conventional wisdom in the animal shelter world that pets adopted for free would suffer at the hands of diabolical people lurking in the shadows just waiting to abuse them. Surely, we thought, people who get animals for free don’t value them,… Learn More

What do the American Pets Alive! Conference and Maddie’s® Idea Lab project results have in common? They both offer actionable, lifesaving advice that you can use in your community! And our very own Director of Research, Dr. Sheila D’Arpino, will be presenting some of those actionable findings during her session, Maddie’s® Idea Lab: Saving Lives… Learn More

Is making a video of a dog in your shelter or rescue group worth the trouble? Absolutely, says a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare. In the study, which was conducted in the UK, 735 people viewed video and photos of four shelter dogs: Two were Staffordshire Terriers, representing dogs who… Learn More

Can you place medium and large dogs with behavioral problems in foster homes and see their behavior improve? Can those dogs eventually be adopted into permanent homes? And can all of that be done safely? Those were the objectives of a 22-month long study conducted by Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Virginia. The result? A… Learn More

When you think of a veterinarian working in an animal shelter, what do you imagine they do there? For many shelter managers who participated in a recent study, that answer is “perform spay/neuter surgery.” However, shelter veterinarians and shelter medicine can play a much larger role in an animal shelter, providing expertise on disease prevention… Learn More