Study examines how failed adoptions affect people’s understanding of pet ownership and the adoption process

While the author of a recent study on failed shelter adoptions compared her subjects’ experiences to failed marriages, perhaps blind dates would be more analogous to the brief encounters the adopters had with their new pets.

In a recent issue of the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science (Vol. 8, No. 3, 2005), researcher Elsie Shore presented the results from her survey of 78 people who had adopted an animal from the Kansas Humane Society but had later returned the pet. Most of the returned animals were dogs, and 54 percent of owners had returned their animals within two weeks of the adoption.

The majority of the survey respondents were white employed females in their twenties or thirties. Most said that returning the animal had been very difficult, and a number also “expressed sadness when discussing the return with the interviewer, including one woman who had been crying about the event just before her telephone rang.”

When asked whether they planned to adopt again, 44 percent said yes, 41 percent said no, and 13 percent said they weren’t sure. “The low proportion of respondents planning to adopt again, especially in a sample largely composed of people who had had pets from childhood, suggest that the failed adoption experience may have suppressed the desire to add a new pet to their household,” Shore wrote.

When respondents were asked whether they had any advice for people who were thinking about getting a pet, many recommended spending more time planning for and considering the ramifications of adopting. They also suggested spending more time with shelter staff, asking more questions, and taking more time at the shelter to get to know the animal.

The idea that adoptions are an unpredictable business was another theme of the responses. Some respondents expressed the belief that adoption is “just a chance you take,” and others, when considering what advice to give potential adopters, began to advise certain approaches but then realized that their own decision to approach the adoption in a similar manner had not saved the relationship.

Shore noted that the reasons respondents gave for the return of their animals did not always match their ideas of what they might do differently next time. For example, the adopter of a 6-month-old border collie who’d had multiple behavior problems (including destructiveness and fear of people) focused on choosing a dog of a different age. “Others who reported aggression as the reason for return also said they would get either smaller or younger animals,” wrote the author. In other words, though frustrated by their experiences, adopters did not necessarily make the correct logical leap about what had caused their difficulties.

The majority of problems behind the failed adoptions, Shore wrote, “were not ones that increased forethought or additional time spent in the shelter could have prevented.” The key to more successful adoptions, she concluded, may be for adopters to have more realistic expectations: “Replacing the expectation of ‘happily ever after’ with an understanding that ‘marriages take work’ could reduce returns by changing adopter expectations. … The provision of new-owner training classes and other services that keep adopters in contact with the shelter may assist in these processes.”

The difference between commitments to a new animal and to a new spouse, though, is not just one of intensity and intent: Those who marry have usually known each other for longer than the half hour or so the average adopter and shelter animal have spent together. The question for shelters remains: Given the time and operational constraints involved in making an introduction and sending an animal home with a new family, how do you make an adoption feel more like a happy marriage than a date with Mr. Wrong?