FAQs

Unless you have a relative or friend willing to adopt your pet, your only real option is to take them to the shelter. Get Your Pet spares pets the stress, exposure to illness, and potential of being euthanized in shelters. Moreover, Get Your Pet will potentially relieve animal shelters of one-third of their annual intake, and allow them to dedicate their limited resources to strays and abused cases. Finally, a portion of Get Your Pet’s proceeds benefits animal welfare organizations.

It’s a simple process that takes just minutes and, as an introductory offer, it’s free! Fill out your pet’s profile, upload some favorite photos and publish the profile on getyourpet.com for potential Adopters to see.

Start finding a new home for your pet!

No. Guardians are not permitted to sell or receive a rehoming fee for their pet on getyourpet.com. You must agree to this when, at no charge to you, you publish your pet on our site.

When an adoption is made on getyourpet.com, we charge the Adopter an adoption fee ($199 for a dog, $49 for a cat) that has several purposes:

• It is enough money to discourage people with bad intentions.
• It indicates that the adopter is both sincere and financially capable.
• It covers the adoption package, which includes access to legal documentation of the adoption for both the Adopter and the Guardian; a voucher for a pet exam by a participating Get Your Pet Vet; a certificate for 30 days’ pet insurance from Trupanion (offer varies in CA due to state insurance regulations); and $40 of services on Rover.com for first time users.
• It pays our bills so that we can help save thousands more pets like yours.

Because it is prohibited to charge a rehoming fee, you should not need to mention money in your pet’s profile.

Every pet on getyourpet.com is “free” in the sense that our agreement with Guardians like yourself is that they will not charge any fee for rehoming their pet on our site, in return for our enabling them to publish their pet at no charge to themselves.

However, every Adopter agrees to pay an adoption fee to getyourpet.com for any pet they adopt on our site. This is the only way we can survive to help Guardians like yourself keep their pets out of shelters.

This means that the pet is not actually “free”. To say so could confuse Adopters because there are some Guardians so committed to getting their pets rehomed that they offer to pay the adoption fee themselves. If you want to offer this, say so, by all means. But don’t call the pet “free.”

Get Your Pet will lead you step by step through the process. Simply go to the home page where it says, “Get your pet adopted,” select “Get Started” and follow the instructions. It takes just minutes to create and publish a profile for your pet on our site.

You must agree to our Terms and Conditions, which require you to be 18 years of age (or legal age in your state, whichever is greater) and legally responsible for the pet. Our complete Terms can be found here.

No. Publishing a pet profile, messaging with Adopters, and getting to a legal adoption are all free for Guardians rehoming a dog or cat.

Every potential Adopter fills out a detailed profile for you, the Guardian, to see. That’s because Get Your Pet believes that no one cares more about finding your pet a good, safe home than you.

A Get Your Pet adoption costs the Adopter $199 for a dog, $49 for a cat. While lower than the cost of almost all shelter adoptions, this fee discourages Adopters who aren’t financially capable of supporting a pet, as well as people seeking to make a profit on an animal, or to misuse the pet they adopt.

Most importantly, you, the Guardian, meet with every potential Adopter. You can ask any questions you want answered (from our suggested list or your own) and no adoption can take place unless you are satisfied that you have found your pet a good, loving home.

Messaging on GetYourPet.com is monitored by our staff and algorithms. When we identify a potential Adopter who is acting suspiciously or in a way inconsistent with our terms and conditions, we flag them and remove their account from our site.

When we do this, we strongly urge Guardians, for their safety, not to participate in any meeting up or messaging outside of the site with the flagged Adopter. GetYourPet.com is committed to the safe and responsible adoption of pets and we strenuously resist any effort to purchase or endanger them.

People feel more comfortable messaging with someone they can visualize. Also, they’ll feel more secure knowing what you look like so they will be able to recognize you at any meet-up that is arranged.

Two words: better content. Make their story long enough and specific enough to make your pet stand out. Add as many clear photos as you can to show off your pet’s personality. Make a video of your pet in action and add that, too — videos get 140% more attention from Adopters.

Guardians can add all this content free. But you can do even more — boost your pet’s profile!

Make sure your pet is putting their best paw forward to attract Adopters. See Top 10 Tips for Getting Your Pet Camera-Ready. If you wish to add a video as well as photos, see 5 Tips for Making Your Pet a Video Star.

If your pet’s video starts and stops when you select the play button on your pet’s profile (i.e., it buffers when you try and play it), then try recording a new video at a lower resolution. Device-specific instructions are below. After recording a new video, go to your Dashboard and, under your pet’s photo, select (small screens) or Add / Update, select Update Video, then select Replace with another video and follow the instructions.

iOS Devices (iPhones, iPads)

1. Select the Settings app.
2. Scroll down (quite a ways!) and select Camera.
3. Select Record Video.
4. Take note of the current setting, then select 720p HD at 30 fps.
5. Record a new video of your pet.
6. Repeat 1-3, then select the original setting.

Android Devices

1. Open the Camera app.
2. Select Settings (gear icon) at the top left.
3. Take note of the current setting, then select Video resolution.
4. Select a lower resolution (options vary by device).
5. Record a new video of your pet.
6. Repeat 1-3, then select the original setting.

Other Devices

Please refer to documentation / instructions that came with your device.

From your dashboard, select “Views” or “Saves”.

Boosting is how you can, for a modest fee, increase the impact of your pet’s profile. You can do this by adding content: longer story, more photos, longer video. You can also buy more prominent placement for your pet’s profile at the top of Browse Pets, have getyourpet.com send out your personal email message to Adopters, and have your message posted to Get Your Pet’s followers on Facebook.

You’ll be able to boost your pet’s profile anytime after you’ve published it. The Boost button will be on your Dashboard under your pet’s photo.

Yes, but not immediately. Our site is designed so that Adopter and Guardian get to know a bit about each other through messaging, first. If you want to exchange off-site contact information, one of you should select Let’s Meet and propose a meet-up and the other should accept the proposal. Then the system will allow you to exchange phone numbers and email addresses in the message window. Don’t worry, making a meet-up costs nothing and you can change or cancel it at any time before it occurs.

We offer a list of helpful Tips for Guardians, including Tips for the Meet-Up and Questions to Ask a Potential Adopter to help you get the full benefit from your meet-ups.

Get Your Pet believes that you, the Guardian, are best qualified to decide who will provide a good home for your pet. We are very thoughtful about providing important guidelines for both Adopters and Guardians to assist in safe and permanent adoptions. But we believe that Guardians are in the best position to take the measure of an Adopter, ask questions about the Adopter’s home and lifestyle and then decide if this is a good fit for their pet.

Yes. You can pursue adoption with more than one Adopter, if you wish, but you should be fair to all concerned and let them know that others are actively interested. Once you transfer possession of your pet to a given Adopter, the pet is no longer available to any other potential Adopter.

On Get Your Pet, you can discontinue messaging with anyone at any time. Select the most recent message from the person, then select Hide under their profile photo.

Adopting a pet is a big decision, so try to be patient. If another day or so passes without any correspondence, try messaging the potential Adopter one last time. If you don’t get a response, move on to other potential Adopters.

Guardians who need to temporarily suspend the listing of their pets may go to their dashboard and select … Add / Update (just … on a mobile device) under their pet’s name, then select Suspend Profile.

You can decline an adoption up to the moment you transfer possession of the pet from yourself to an Adopter. Until then, the pet is still yours and the decision about what home they go to is yours to make.

This is one of the most positive things about the Get Your Pet model for adoption. It is an open and transparent process between a Guardian and an Adopter. Whatever the two of you decide works, you can do.