Open for (pet adoption) business on Sunday

With his expressive tan eyebrows, soft brown eyes, and penchant for smooches, Jack is just one of those pups who pull at your heartstrings. But despite all that, he had been at Mohave County Animal Shelter in Arizona for months.

Then one sunny Sunday, his life changed forever. Volunteers from Friends of Mohave County Animal Shelter pulled up to the shelter, loaded up Jack and a few of his canine buddies in their car, and drove them to a special adoption event at the nearby PetSmart.

Mohave County Animal Shelter, a Best Friends Network Partner, is open six days a week and closed on Sundays. The schedule makes operational sense for a municipal shelter, but it also means people can’t visit on a day when many are off work.

So the shelter found a workaround. Lynn Kannianen, president of Friends of Mohave County Animal Shelter — a nonprofit organization that helps support the county shelter and also a Best Friends Network Partner, teamed up with shelter manager Nicole Mangiameli to launch volunteer-run Sunday adoption events at a nearby PetSmart. The events — called Pup-Up Sundays — bring adoptable pets out of the shelter and into the community.

Through a recent Best Friends Bring Love Home Challenge, Friends of Mohave County Animal Shelter received grant funding that allowed them to reduce adoption fees, recruit and mobilize volunteers, and host three Pup-Up Sunday adoption events at PetSmart in one month.

What happens when shelters make pet adoption easier?

The Bring Love Home Challenge is for Best Friends Network Partners. It gives them support and incentives to pilot at least one new practice — such as expanding hours for adoptions, reducing adoption fees, shortening applications, skipping home checks, or trying creative marketing ideas — to make it easier for people to say yes to adoption.

During the most recent challenge, more than 15,000 pets moved out of shelters and into homes in just one month, with Best Friends contributing more than $500,000 in funding to participating partners. Our goal at Best Friends is for every shelter nationwide to reach no-kill, and supporting shelters and rescue groups by awarding them funds is one way we’re helping them and the pets and families they serve.

That’s the big picture. Here’s what it looked like on the ground: Lynn and Nicole, a PetSmart store, and a volunteer team.

“Lynn is an incredible partner,” says Nicole. “Once we started talking about adding Sunday adoptions, we both knew it could work — as long as we had volunteers.”

And Lynn helped make that happen. She coordinated the Sunday events, pulling together a team of volunteers: one to wrangle the wiggly pooches and drive them from the shelter to PetSmart, one to keep an eye on them, one or two to handle the bigger dogs, and someone to process the adoptions.

At first, Nicole worried it would be tricky without the shelter’s front desk staff to process adoptions and run credit cards — but it wasn’t. “When we publicized the events, we asked people to bring cash, and they did,” says Nicole.

The community response was immediate. Adopters showed up an hour early, lining up before the doors even opened. In just one weekend, 25 pets landed in new homes. By the end of the month, adoptions had increased 178% compared to the same period in the previous year.

Embracing change saves more pets at Arizona shelter

“Whenever we’re at PetSmart, we have higher visibility because of all the shoppers,” says Nicole. “You have a different group of people who shop on Sundays, and that makes a huge difference. It’s amazing that one day could make that much of a difference, but it does.”

She adds, “Most people are off (work) on Sundays, and it’s just a way more relaxed atmosphere. There were more families. Nobody was in a hurry. It’s kind of a Sunday fun day.”

Now, the team consistently hosts two or three Pup-Up Sundays a month, and they’re working to recruit more volunteers so they can eventually offer adoptions every Sunday at PetSmart — bringing adoptable pets to where people are already spending time, on a day that’s convenient for them.

“Sometimes the solution isn’t bigger budgets or new buildings,” says Jessica Gutmann, Best Friends mountain west region senior strategist. “It’s asking a simple question: When are families available, and how do we meet them there? Sunday adoptions weren’t complicated; they were responsive. And that responsiveness saved lives.”

Jack didn’t know any of that. He only knew that one Sunday, he ended up somewhere new, surrounded by people leisurely shopping, stopping to chat with volunteers, and saying hi to some wiggly dogs with wagging tails. And while plenty of folks gravitated toward the puppies (who can resist?), one person walked in, saw Jack's expressive little eyebrows, and chose him.

And because adoption fees were supported through the Bring Love Home Challenge, Jack’s adopter could put that money toward the beginning-of-a-new-life basics: an extra-fluffy bed, a stash of squeaky toys, and plenty of tasty treats.

For Jack, Pup-Up Sundays (and the partnership that created them) turned one closed day at the shelter into an open door to walk into a happy new life.

Our goal at Best Friends is to support all animal shelters in the U.S. in reaching no-kill. No-kill means saving every dog and cat in a shelter who can be saved, accounting for community safety and good quality of life for pets. 

Shelter staff can’t do it alone. Saving animals in shelters is everyone’s responsibility, and it takes support and participation from the community. No-kill is possible when we work together thoughtfully, honestly, and collaboratively.