WE’RE FEATURED ON PHILLY.COM!
Our Founder, Angela Marcus, is featured on Philly.com, sharing why she created getyourpet.com, the current challenges local shelters face, as well as her life-long dedication to saving domestic animals. We thank reporter Robert Moran of the Philadelphia Inquirer for helping us get the word out so we can help more pets go from one good home to another!
Take a look at the article on Philly.com or read below:
Angela Marcus, a former director of operations for the Pennsylvania SPCA, had an idea: What if there was a way to connect people who need to surrender pets with people who want to adopt, completely bypassing animal shelters. In today’s sharing economy, “if you want to go somewhere, you go in someone else’s car. If you want to stay somewhere, you stay in someone else’s house,” Marcus said, citing Uber and Airbnb.
Last November, Marcus, a 33-year-old Bucks County native, launched Get Your Pet, a website that enables home-to-home adoptions. She hopes it becomes the future of pet adoptions. Instead of dropping a pet off at a shelter, an owner can list their animal on getyourpet.com. Potential adopters browse listings for dogs and cats and can contact an owner directly. A meeting is set up between both parties. If everything works out, the pet is checked by a veterinarian and the adopter pays a $99 fee. The adoption is then made official.
An estimated 2.5 million pets are surrendered annually to shelters across the country, Marcus said. For many of the animals, shelters can be traumatic.
“You’re in a cage 24 hours a day,” Marcus said. Shelter life can lead to illness for the pet. And if there isn’t room, the pet is euthanized.
Her fledgling company has so far facilitated nine adoptions in the Philadelphia region. Get Your Pet recently entered into a partnership with Animal Care and Control Team of Philadelphia, the city’s official shelter. The timing is fortuitous for both sides. On Monday, ACCT Philly began a major renovation of its kennel’s heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. During the two-month project, the shelter’s capacity to take in large dogs will be reduced by half, from 100 to 50. It is an opportunity for Get Your Pet, which will maintain a kiosk at the shelter during the renovation.
“We are referring to Get Your Pet,” said Audra Houghton, operations director at ACCT Philly. “Anything we can do to get people to keep their their pets in their home [to reduce] owner surrenders.”
ACCT Philly spends an average of $168 for each animal that arrives at the shelter, Houghton said. That covers basic care and medical expenses. The shelter takes in about 25,000 animals a year, so it will save money by avoiding surrenders. Also, with each adoption through Get Your Pet, 5 percent of the fee goes back to help shelters.
The first success story for Get Your Pet started at ACCT Philly. Marcus was at the shelter when she met a Philadelphia man who needed to surrender a pit bull named Coco, who was not getting along with the family’s two other dogs. Marcus told him about her website and he agreed to try it to find Coco a new home. However, he could not keep Coco in his home, so Marcus arranged for a foster to take her. Through Get Your Pet, the man communicated with two potential adopters, but neither were a good fit.
Then he was contacted by Caitlyn and Adam Kotchetovsky of Sellersville. The couple had just lost a dog to cancer in October. They learned about Coco in early November through Caitlyn’s aunt and joined Get Your Pet. “Everything was through the website,” said Caitlyn, 26. The couple met Coco’s owner that weekend. They learned about tricks Coco could perform.
“That’s what I liked about the whole experience with Get Your Pet. You know the dog’s background,” Caitlyn said. The following Monday, Coco got a veterinary exam and then the adoption was completed. The couple renamed her Ruby.
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Read the full article here on Philly.com. Thank you again to Robert Moran, the reporter who conducted the interview who you can find on Twitter here, and Anthony Beltran, who took the photos featured in the story.