Breed Identification

[Amie]

How does your shelter/rescue do it? Right now, we eyeball, and label anything without papers as a mix. We've had several animals come in that people swore were purebred that we smiled and nodded and changed the breed once they left (ex. there's just no way that twenty pound two month old puppy was an Italian Greyhound...)

But at a meeting the other day our Director of Operations mentioned that more and more shelters were doing away with breed labels at all, and instead using the individual dog's characteristics. She knows this would thrill me to no end, so she was quick to state that we didn't yet know if we were going in that direction, but I find the idea exciting and intriguing none-the-less.

Anyone have experience with this practice?

[GoingPostal]

How do you petfinder search by characteristics would be my question. It seems to me like a good idea, but how many adopters really pick based on that? Most don't have any chance to really know or see what the dog is like, so they are going off looks, breed, and an hour of interaction. The shelter here is a bunch of idiots who can't id a dog or cat to save their life, they think everything is a rare breed type of deal, and any mix must only be of two breeds. I don't know, I mean obviously you can't get breed guesses right 100% of the time but they are helpful to a point.

[buckaroo]

Too confusing to potential adopters and your petfinder hits will plummet since people search dogs by breed. I would bet most people find your dogs online via Petfinder and not your website. If you're not sure, you can check your web stats.

Also, how do tell someone they can't adopt that dog who probably is a pit mix because their apartment doesn't allow bully breeds if your shelter refuses to label him as such? BSL and other breed restrictions obligate you to label dogs by breed to some extent.

There is probably some value in it but I would use both labels.