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At Gateway Pet Guardians, we believe that open, progressive adoption policies save lives. Our goal is to match pets to homes which are good fits while providing exemplary customer service that creates community support and turns adopters into animal advocates and lifelong supporters of the organization.
“Open adoptions address this reality by doing away with rigid policies and adoption applications and instead focusing on conversations designed to help anyone walking into a shelter feel respected, and anyone walking out to be more educated, and hopefully, with a pet to love.” - Million Cat Challenge
Our goal is to have an open, honest conversation with potential adopters that is both more encompassing than relying on an adoption application alone, but also less confrontational and judgmental to the potential adopter. Open also means we, the organization, are open and honest with the adopter about our process and the pets within our care.
The application itself is a launching pad for conversation only. It is not an end-all where a wrong answer disqualifies an applicant. Questions on the application are restricted to only areas we deem very valuable. We will not ask applicants what their job title is, their salary, or make lists of every pet he or she has ever owned. Our areas of concern lie in the home being a good fit for the individual pet and the adopter’s ability and desire to provide a safe, loving home. To that end, we only ask questions which address these major areas.
Our philosophy, from the receipt of an adoption application, is that the potential adopter is a good person who applied to adopt from an animal rescue is trying to do the right thing: adopt a rescue pet or support the organization. When the adoption process starts, we come from a place of “yes”. This means we believe that when you apply to adopt a pet, we start from the position that the person is going to adopt a pet unless the adopter presents a reason otherwise that cannot be overcome.
Even if the adopter presents a potential barrier to adoption, we will come from a place of education versus denial or judgement. Not everyone has all the experience and knowledge we do from being involved in animal welfare. So we try to educate versus assume the worst in a person if a concern occurs. When discussing a concern, we also believe in being honest - while sensitive and professional - when expressing those concerns to an adopter. If we are judging someone to be an unfit adopter, we believe that person has the right to respond and maybe even change our minds!
We do not perform home checks for routine adoptions as data and common sense have long since dictated that these are not only ineffective and resource intensive, but are a barrier to adoptions.
We do not contact landlords to ensure pet deposits have been paid or that you are allowed to have pets. In this case, the adopter is the one taking all the risk while there is no risk to the pet. (In the worst case, the pet is returned to GPG, which is not a bad thing.)
Data Driven Policies
These policies on open and progressive adoption policies are not just anecdotal; multiple studies by industry leaders exist that dispel long held myths surrounding pet adoptions:
Do free adoptions increase the risk of poor care and abandonment? Results from a recent study conducted by researchers at Maddie's® Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida say no.
http://www.maddiesfund.org/free-pet-adoptions-study-results.htm
Research done by the Open Journal of Animal Science indicates that those who adopt through conversation based adoptions (policy-free) provide similar high quality care and are just as likely to be highly bonded to their pet as those that adopt through policy based adoptions. Policy-based adoptions can restrict the pool of potential adopters, can slow down the adoption process, and change the experience for the potential adopter. http://file.scirp.org/pdf/OJAS_2014102415592327.pdf
Shelter adoption lore once held that pets acquired around holidays were more likely to be returned after the glow of the holidays passed. This myth has been solidly debunked.
https://millioncatchallenge.org/resources/removing-barriers-to-adoption
A growing body of research is suggesting adoptions done with less intrusive methods of pet-adopter matchmaking are just as effective as, and even more successful than, those with lots of hoops to jump through.
https://www.maddiesfund.org/removing-barriers-to-adoption.htm
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