A lifelong, loving home for every pet—one adoption event at a time

When I tell people I work for PetSmart Charities, I sense they think I play with puppies and kittens all day (I wish).

In truth, being our adoption events manager is hard work. My job is to find lifelong, loving homes for more than 400,000 pets every year. That’s no small task.

In some ways, we’re matchmakers. Our goal is to give adoptable pets as many chances as possible to find the right forever homes.

Partners in caring
We partner with animal welfare agencies that care for homeless pets throughout the United States and Canada. With our support, they can significantly boost adoption rates by bringing pets to areas where there are lots of people, be it a PetSmart store, fairground or other busy location.

Any given weekend, you’ll find a variety of adoption events underway that are sponsored by PetSmart Charities.

It might be a community-wide event like the one recently organized by the Jacksonville, Fla. Humane Society. The event pulled together animals from multiple shelters in the area. PetSmart Charities provided funding for advertising, transportation and rental fees for tents and tables. Events like this can easily result in more than 500 adoptions. We held one event in Jacksonville in July where more than 900 pets found homes.

These community adoption events have helped many, many pets find their forever homes: we’re on track to adopt more than 13,000 pets at our community adoption events in 2012—an increase over 3,500 adoptions just two years ago.

We also work with agencies like HALO Animal Rescue, PACC911 and Best Friend Animal Society to make sure they have the right tools to hold, local adoption events throughout the year. Each event typically finds homes for anywhere from 100 to 300 pets. At our most recent event with HALO and the Arizona Animal Welfare League, more than 300 pets found homes.

Four times per year, PetSmart Charities hosts National Adoption Weekends. These bring together thousands of U.S., Canadian and Puerto Rican local animal welfare organizations to host adoption events on-site at the 1,250 PetSmart stores. It’s a great way for PetSmart’s store managers to get in on the action and work closely with the agencies in their communities. Our next National Adoption Weekend is right around the corner, Nov. 3-4.

What is success?
Any time I need a pick-me-up, I read the adoption stories on PetSmart Charities blog. While we often gauge the success of our work in the number of animals we’ve helped find homes, there’s another important metric to consider.

What strikes me in every story is the people who adopt the pets never talk about what they are doing for the animals. Instead, the stories are all about the love the pets bring to their homes, to their families. That’s the real measure of success.