The site has many many practical Marketing purposes. One useful marketing tool is the Happy Tails portion of the site (if you visit scroll down on the left side and you will get to a happy tails link).
DATA: 24% of adoptors returning a questionnaire cited reading happy tails as a motivating factor towards wanting to adopt their own dog, and wanting to adopt a WT dog when they see how hard we and our foster parents work for our waggys.
For example, Greg stated that he enjoyed reading the Happy Tails before he adopted Jersey. I was Jerseys foster mother and she had the most severe case of fear biting I had ever seen. I know its very hard to believe based on the picture.
She had no bite inhibition, very few warning signs, a strong jaw, and a tendency to hold on and shake the offending hand. Consulting behaviorists were on the fence about her future. I knew we might be in trouble if we did not find the Perfect adoptor who would have to be someone realistic, brave, and patient. Many people wanted Jersey but I could not let them try if I did not feel they were ready for the sudden change in her when she was scared- it would not have been fair to the adopters. Along came Greg. He was fearless and relaxed and totally understood Jersey. Reading the Happy Tails helps people understand what rescue is and what to expect. Elke, Candy's guardian, also cites the website as a factor that helped her decide to adopt a rescue dog and stick with it afterwards. Elke wrote: ALSO, there was a page, I think, on the website, about adopting rescue dogs and these are things you need to know. They are not like puppies from a breeder, these are the problems that rescue dogs often have. It made me feel like there was real honesty there. Like no one was going to sugarcoat Penny's problems or try to trick me into adopting a pet that wasn't right for me.
In preparation for this submission we formulated a questionnaire and to date, received and entered 29 responses. This data is still in quite a raw form, but if you are interested, here it is.
