Shelters and rescues in the Houston area are seeing a drop in adoption rates due to recent changes and technical issues on Petfinder. The updated search filter now requires users to manually select out-of-town pets, making it harder for rescues like Three Little Pitties Rescue to reach adopters in other areas. Suzanne Schaefer, director of administration for Three Little Pitties Rescue, said, "Our adoptions have trickled from 35 to 40 applications a day down to five applications a day. We have about 950 animals in our program and really no place to send them right now," according to Click2Houston.
Petfinder's tech upgrade in early December caused software issues that stop shelters like Three Little Pitties from uploading pet photos, slowing down adoptions. Jodi Leslie, Community Outreach Director for Three Little Pitties, said, "We adopt out 250 to 400 animals a month, they come from Petfinder," and "Now we are down to about five applications a week. It has hit us and other rescue groups really hard," as stated by FOX 26 Houston.
Petfinder said it is working to improve its service based on user feedback. "One of the top user complaints we received over the past year was that local searches included out-of-town pets by default, which confused potential pet adopters seeking nearby adoptions," the organization said, adding that users can still include out-of-town pets by selecting a checkbox in their search filters, as reported by Click2Houston. Some rescues that rely on out-of-town adoptions may be affected by the changes, while local facilities like Harris County Pets and BARC have not reported major issues. Petfinder also said, "We appreciate everyone's patience as we make updates and feel confident we will be able to better serve our users with our new platform once they are resolved," as per FOX 26 Houston.
