Factors Influencing Time to Adoption for Dogs in a Provincial Shelter System in Canada

ABSTRACT

Millions of companion animals are relinquished to shelters each year. For each dog entering, their characteristics and the characteristics of the shelter holding him/her influence their time to adoption. Using a Cox proportional hazards frailty model, these issues were explored using data from 31 shelters within the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter system. Results indicated that surrender reason, age, original source, coat color, breed, human population density of the shelter location, and year the nonhuman animal entered the shelter significantly influenced time to adoption. This study identified characteristics of dogs that make them less likely to be adopted quickly. Given limited resources, these results may help inform shelters on how to best allocate resources, particularly in interventions to improve adoption rates in shelters.

KEYWORDS:

• Adoption
• Cox proportional hazard model
• companion animals
• animal shelter
• overpopulation

Acknowledgments

We thank the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for working with us and sharing their data. We also thank Chanditha Priyanatha for aiding in data cleaning and data organization.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Nestlé Purina PetCare Canada Chair in Communications.