Dog shelters are currently overwhelmed in many parts of the U.S., with some of the oldest dogs often at the highest risk of being euthanized. But now is a great time to consider adopting a dog, especially from a place like San Francisco’s Muttville Senior Dog Rescue, which maintains some of our favorite social media accounts on the internet.
Muttville has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting new technology. And that makes sense when you remember that many of the volunteers and staff behind the Bay Area rescue live in the heart of America’s tech industry. In fact, the domain for Muttville was purchased in 1998, likely before any other pet rescue in the country was even thinking about establishing a presence on the web.
“We were on Vine like the first week,” Jane Goldman, the Chief Content Officer at Muttville, told Gizmodo about the late great video-sharing service. “What we have to offer are cute dogs. And video was like the perfect medium.”
And while Vine is no longer around (despite Elon Musk’s hints that he might resurrect it at X) Muttville’s still constantly churning out new photos and videos on sites like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, X, and TikTok, including the newbies of the week videos, guaranteed to make you smile. The goal, of course, is to get the public interested in adoption by bringing those dogs to a larger audience of potential adopters.
It’s not just the public-facing tech that’s helping these elderly dogs find homes. Goldman told Gizmodo about an internal app built by one of the shelter’s volunteers that allows staff, volunteers, and foster families to easily access available information about any given dog in their system.
“We used to have a binder of all the available dogs, and we would take it out,” Goldman said. “Now we scrape the data on our shelter’s software and bring in the info about intake information and medical information that our fosters use to talk to the potential adopters.”
Muttville also has a livestream called the Wagcam, which anyone can watch from noon to 4 p.m. ET, providing a special behind-the-scenes peek at dogs straight from the shelter in San Francisco.
Animal shelters have struggled in recent months with overcrowding that’s forcing them to make tough decisions, especially in California. The San Diego Humane Society is currently at 157% capacity and they’re waiving adoption fees for the first 100 adoptions this weekend. After the first 100, adoption fees will still be at the incredibly low rate of just $25.
Shelters in Los Angeles are struggling even more, with L.A. Animal Shelters currently at 212% capacity, with 1,566 dogs housed in a space built for just 737. There are currently 97 dogs on the city’s Red Alert List scheduled to be euthanized soon if they’re not adopted.
It’s always a good time to adopt a pet in need, especially a senior dog. If you’ve been thinking about it for a while and want to get a new addition to your family, this might be the weekend to do the most good.
Muttville is hosting an adoption event in San Francisco on Saturday, May 25 and their Memorial Day Mutt Walk, in honor of Muttville volunteer Jennie Chen, is being held at Crissy Field on Monday, May 27.
And if you don’t live in California, there are dog shelters all across the country that are just a Google search away. Muttville may have been an extremely early adopter of new tech, but so many dog rescues around the country are finding ways to connect animals with their forever homes thanks to social media.
Platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and X get a lot of well-deserved criticism for some of the social harms that have emerged in the past decade. But organizations like Muttville are harnessing that kind of reach to make a positive impact in the world. And sometimes it’s good to get a reminder that technology really can be a force for good.
And if you’re interested in the dogs at the top of this post, those are Pyrex (left, #11860), Sundae (middle, #11732), and Kabob (right, #11852), but you can also check out the complete list of available mutts.