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Entry 86Filed under Breeding

You Asked the Potential Adopter What? Why Shelters Are Rethinking Intrusive Adoption Questions

Best Friends Animal Society's Sue Cosby argues shelters should swap intrusive application questions for honest conversation about the animal and the home.
3-minute read By Animalso Team
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Best Friends Animal Society’s answer is that many adoption-screening questions should be replaced with conversation. In her editorial “You Asked the Potential Adopter What?”, Sue Cosby, the organization’s senior director of lifesaving centers, argues that shelters and rescues can still protect animals while treating adopters as partners. The method is honest, open-ended, nonjudgmental talk that explains an animal’s needs. It replaces intrusive questions and rigid yes/no screening.

The core argument

Organizations want animals to go to loving homes. Screening built around worst-case assumptions, though, can make adoption judgmental and needlessly hard. Cosby’s fix is to ask why each question exists. Then use the underlying worry as a prompt to talk about practical preparation and what a specific animal needs.

Her proposed opening is: “How can I help you find a pet today?” She sees it as more welcoming than handing over a long application. It puts staff and adopter on the same side and invites the adopter to say what brought them in. In her words: “Starting an interaction with a potential adopter by asking ‘How can I help you find a pet today?’ is far more successful at achieving our goals than just sliding a clipboard with a multi-page application on it.”

That is her assertion and reported experience, not a controlled study. She says she has spent years asking applicants these questions, but the editorial gives no study design or numerical comparison. The page reviewed also shows no publication date.

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Questions that ask applicants to predict the future

Some screening questions ask whether someone will keep their job, home or good health, or whether they plan to have children. Nobody can answer these reliably. A shelter that judges a household by its situation today may not prepare the adopter for changes later. Cosby says explicitly that asking whether an applicant is pregnant or plans to have children soon is not appropriate.

Turning safety screens into counseling

Her alternative keeps the safety concern but changes what staff do with it.

Pools

A pool question can become a conversation about a particular dog’s attraction to water and how to pet-proof the pool. It does not need to be a pass/fail gate. The aim is practical preparation, not insisting on a particular product.

Declawing

Asking whether an adopter will declaw a cat is a chance to explain what declawing involves, why the organization opposes it, and how to manage scratching. Cosby notes that some applicants mistake declawing for routine nail trimming. A yes/no screen would miss that misunderstanding, and a conversation catches it.

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Planning for returns

Circumstances change, and an animal may stop fitting a given home. Cosby does not treat a return as a moral failure. She recommends clear return policies and arrangements made in advance, such as boarding kennels or on-call foster parents. As one example, a shelter might stipulate one week’s notice. That is an illustration, not a universal rule.

Why welcome matters

Prospective adopters often arrive excited. Judgmental or intrusive questions can undercut a shelter’s role as a supportive resource for the life of the pet, not just the day of adoption.

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How this fits Best Friends’ wider guidance

Best Friends’ program endorsements page and its one-page overview describe “conversation-based adoption services” in the same terms. They call for nonjudgmental conversations instead of lengthy applications, efforts to be inclusive, and matching pets to home environments. The overview also lists related measures:

  • removing home, veterinarian and landlord checks, and fenced-yard requirements
  • removing age restrictions for adopters and family members
  • reduced or waived fees
  • expanded hours and same-day adoption

This is Best Friends’ endorsed approach. It is not a legal standard, and not every shelter follows it.

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The overview reports that adoption made up 63.4% of outcomes in 2,118 no-kill shelters in 2019. That is a dated, organization-reported figure. It is not a current universal rate, and it does not show that any one screening method caused those outcomes.

The same page lists follow-up resources for shelter professionals: an Open Adoptions Playbook, an online Client Service and Adoptions course, and the Best Friends Adoption Barrier Study. The study is described as qualitative. It aims to understand the pet acquisition process, adoption barriers and possible solutions.

A framework for reviewing your own process

The editorial does not compare named programs. Its logic does suggest five checks for any adoption process:

Check Weaker practice Practice the editorial favors
Format Form-led, clipboard first Conversation first, opened with “How can I help you find a pet today?”
Question focus Speculation about jobs, health, housing or children Current, realistic pet-care needs
Value to the adopter Screening that only filters Animal-specific counseling, such as pool safety or managing scratching
Accessibility Barriers that exclude people without a clear welfare reason Inclusive, welcoming practices
Returns Treated as failure, no plan Clear policy plus capacity such as boarding or on-call fosters

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