THE USE OF VIRTUAL MEET-AND-GREETS TO AID IN COMPATIBILITY DETERMINATION BETWEEN POTENTIAL ADOPTERS AND ADULT RESCUE DOGS

Abstract

Overpopulation in animal shelters continues to be a problem in modern society. Adoption is more likely to occur and be successful if the dog is perceived as being compatible with the potential adopter. Compatibility can be determined in part through a meet-and-greet, a common introduction between dog and potential adopter in shelters and rescues. The onset of a global pandemic, COVID-19, has made these physical interactions dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the humans involved. This project attempted to mitigate these health concerns by developing virtual meet-and-greets that could be experienced from home. Content was collected and published in individual profiles on FlipGrid, a virtual education platform, and distributed to the public via several rescue websites. Two surveys were distributed; one based on the virtual meet-and-greets in the published profiles, and one based on an example virtual meet-and-greet. This project resulted in no significant findings due to a lack of survey responses (n=8). It is hypothesized that this was due to poor distribution of the surveys, a limited number of profiles constructed, and an inadequate amount of content collected. The efficacy and practicality of virtual meet-and-greets can not be determined without further research, although these meet- and-greets are promising. Overall, the lesson that this project provided was that ideas that look and sound good in theory could fail to be implementable and practical in reality. Further studies in this area should take into consideration the feasibility of virtual meet-and-greets for the rescues producing them and should consider advertising the project and surveys on social media to increase the response rate.