PetFinder

The first thing is this organization should be ashamed! IS THIS ANOTHER SCAM? I'm sure your hands are out to collect donations and money! I have reached out to inquire about 3 different dogs and NOT ONE RESPONSE! And It's been 3 weeks. You claim to have such an urgency to adopt and can't even return a call or email? Please get in touch with your local animal shelters in your area and you will have a better chance of helping a fur baby in need.

They have hundreds of thousands of cats that need to go to loving homes, but the fosters are reluctant to give a kitten to a home with children. It doesn't seem to me that they really care to adopt them out, and have some ridiculous criteria and credentails. Home would need for a kitten. We apparently need another cat to be able to adopt. How many cats are
Euthanized a year?! Save yourself and your kids the heartache and adopt local, from people who would love to meet you, and place a cat that needs a home in your care.

This is a dangerous site just like Craigslist for animals it's not for the safety or return of animals it's for sadists animals toturers and it gives them all the info they need address description phone number there is no security check it's popular oh no trash dump next door because the abusers can say oh I'm so sorry Fido is lost I'll help you and the butt nuggets who think they are so powerful oh no next door happily give out all info without a blink needs to be shut down

I literally have made numerous attempts to adopt. Every time I do I get notified that the dog is taken. ( Well remove the listing)!
Then I tried calling because 1 particular dog a teacup poodle is " supposedly available named KIKI, from Dover, Mass. The mailbox is full all the time so you can't leave a message and they won't take applications for review. ( Which I already filled out/!
I also own 3 home's the requirements were you be within a 50 mile radius of Dover, Mass. I own in Methuen, Mass. I own next to Wells, Maine beach summers and Largo, Florida winter's. I have tons of time and meet every requirements up to even pad training.
But these terms are ridiculous. I am a 59 year old retired nurse and have tons of love and we lost our toy Pomeranian 2 week's back who was spoiled rotten and pad trained.
Unfortunately it's their loss. I also am a interior designer and live in beautiful homes with no carpeting in the event of an pee accident. I have huge porches on both homes near the beaches so the dog isn't stuck in and can satisfy her curiosity when I go out on them.
I can't help but be angry. I told them take me off the email list as I believe it's false hopes and advertising.
Why bother being teased by something that obviously is a scam.
They also get extremely poor ratings.
There's got to be a reason.
John Markey, Methuen, Massachusetts
Wells, Maine/ summer
Largo, Florida/ winter

First, Petfinder doesn't monitor those who post. When you complete and submit an application to adopt, most of the time you never hear from anyone - even after several attempts to reach them. Second, after submitting your application (and never hearing from anyone I might add), Petfinder keeps sending emails asking if you've adopted that particular animal. They give you several choices: No, Not Yet, Yes, etc. I haven't been able to reach Petfinder. It's not my application, home visit or vet reviews (they're excellent). We have decent jobs and are responsible adults well able to provide a safe/secure home for any pet. So why don't those who post respond? I know how folks feel about puppy mills and pet stores, but that's where we'll be getting our next pet. TIP: If you want to drive potential worthy adopters away, keep doing what you're doing! On the other hand if you want people to adopt the many, many pets featured on your website, then start taking responsibility for the lackadaisical way you run your business! I've heard people say it's too much trouble to rescue - they often add that rescues are stricter than going to the pet store! We have the best intentions when we visit sites like Petfinder and we have experience with special needs animals. Unfortunately, many fosters and those who post have their own agendas. Not a fan.

Total waste of time. You'll never hear back. You're better off looking at local animal shelter/Humane Society/non-profit animal rescue sites. OR, just go visit in-person. Pet Finder is a total scam.

Three different dogs sold right under my nose. I made sure to put my filters on within the last few days I applied to adopt three different dogs and none of them are straight forward adopting they make you go to third party sited to file your paper work and then you have to wait on an email back meanwhile no one checks these emails and direct contact to the dog center isn't helping either they put you on a back burner every single time and they end up giving the dogs away to family or neighbors thanks for wasting my times filling out multiple spreadsheets from a different site each time JUST USE CRAIGSLIST

We are 70 years of age and have bee rejected 4 times in 13 months. Dispute owning and caring for 12 dogs between us 7 being pure bred bird dogs.

I am finding many dogs that are "safe with cats, children, other dogs" and it is not true at all. The shelter we adopted from was very small and dirty. After taking the dog home and being told she was not aggressive at all and never had any problems with others, she nearly killed my cat a few days later, literally out of nowhere, and they had been getting on very well together. When we returned the dog and told her what happened, we were told that it was probably just a fluke and that she was still going to list the dog as being compatible with cats. Yikes. Please screen your shelters better, or these animals will continue to be passed along and lied about.

On top of that, I feel that dogs with high prey drive instincts should probably not be listed as safe with smaller animals. My local Petfinder area is flooded with a greyhound racing breeder who claims their dogs are safe with all animals, though the breed has a very high prey drive and is likely to go after cats. While people should do their research, I bet there are a lot of people that don't and find out the hard way with a high vet bill or dead cat. All that said, I just can't trust Petfinder's screening processes or believe what people say about the animals up for adoption.

You go to the site, put in your zip code and it shows you dogs or cats available in your area from local shelters. It's just a go between for people shopping around and the shelter. People giving it a bad rating are basing it on their experience with the individual seller/shelter. That's your job to check out who's selling the pet, not petfinder. They are just connecting you to the seller/shelter. We've been looking for a companion for my boyfriends father and it led us right to all the shelters in our area. Once we found a pet we thought he'd like, I contacted the shelter directly. Most shelters operate one an email system because they'd otherwise be answering the phone all day with inquires instead of taking care of the animals. They are often short staffed. If you send an email you may have to wait a few days for someone to respond. They get A LOT of people requesting info on pets. Sorry, but that's just how the shelter systems work. If you had a bad experience with the shelter, give them a bad review, not petfinder... they already did their job.

I would give High Springs animal unit a million stars if I could! I adopt dogs from different rescues across the state and stumbled upon this rescue... I was looking for another yorkie and I found this rescue on allpaws.com. I contacted them and they were very friendly abd knowledgeable, they answered all my questions. They allowed me to come to the shelter and check out all of the adorable pups available for adoption. I was given permission to take the dogs out of the kennels and play with them. I chose to adopt Cinderella the Shih Tzu because I heard her background story and it broke my heart. She's been through so much and I knew that she deserves to be loved and I could give her that. More than a month after adopting her, she's doing good and I fall more in love with her each and every day I have her! My other dog's adore her! She was shy at first but has warmed up well, Cinderella is sweet and well behaved. I wanted a Yorkie but she's the best thing that's happened to me all year! I couldn't be happier. I would highly recommend this shelter. It's a shame that allpaws no longer has a website and this shelter doesn't get enough attention but they should because they are awesome! Please adopt from this rescue, you won't be disappointed. I plan on adopting gabby next, she is s Yorkie.

On petfinder you cannot:
Search by key words in descriptions like "mellow" or "fluffy"
Exclude a breed or breeds from a search
Sort the results by oldest or newest listings
Exclude or include listings that specify things like "must own a house with yard"
Exclude or include listings where the dog is being transported hundreds of miles

There are two main issues--one, the data collected from the shelters is pretty spotty. Some shelters enter descriptions that are, well, descriptive. Other shelters copy and paste the same thing every time. Although petfinder attempts to offer a filter for "kids in home", shelters provide poor data so that you will still get tons of results for "cannot have kids". This is not entirely the developers' fault, though they could validate and enforce some aspects of the data coming in.
The other problem is just that there really is not much development gone into this site. Why not have the descriptions indexed for searching by key phrases? Why not put a posted date on each listing?
This site could be amazing and much more helpful to animals if it had more work put in. I don't know if it's a funding thing or what.

Since it appears that many people leaving reviews here are computer/internet illiterate, I thought I'd write a "review" to help these people.

Okay. So, you leave an inquiry about a pet that you really, really want and you're so excited because this one pet is absolutely perfect for you, but... You don't hear back. Well, that's very discouraging. The thing is, some shelters don't look at inquiries they receive through Petfinder. That's not their fault nor is it Petfinder's fault. You have to keep in mind that shelters receive numerous inquiries about the pets they have because animals are cute and adorable. You're not the only one who thinks Sasha would be the perfect fit for your family.

I see Petfinder as a way of looking at nearby shelters to see what they have before I go there in person just so I'm not wasting gas/time. Most shelters have their own websites that they include in the description of the pets they have listed on Petfinder. You can still send inquiries through Petfinder, but you can also go to the shelter's website and submit an application. You can absolutely still send an inquiry through Petfinder, but just make sure you also submit an application through a shelter's website (if they have one) so there's a higher chance your request/inquiry will be seen by someone.

I tried to adopt a Cat after my Cat passed away on January 12th and after 4 weeks I heard nothing so when I sent a message asking what is going on with adoption process a women messaged me back saying she was sorry but the volunteers run the process which I understood but that did not help me move forward with my adoption. I continued to complain why I haven't heard anything yet and finally someone emailed me back saying because I kept complaining they could not help me and that made me very angry because I had already picked the Cat I wanted and because of their broken process they denied my Cat and many others the possibility of getting adopted, that is why this place exist to get these precious animals adopted and denied me the opportunity to adopt. After looking at the the reviews here I see 339 people were not happen with Petfinder and something needs to be done...Ah try getting more volunteers to speed up the process so I gave up on these people and took another route to adopt but the fact is they are not successful at getting animals adopted and they should feel nothing but guilt and these reviews prove it