Pet Finder

Pet Finder is one of the biggest websites in the world that deals with the adoption of unwanted pets. It is essence a database of animals housed in pet shelters and pounds.

Pet Finder is to be found under Petfinder.org or Petfinder.com and was the brainchild of Jared and Betsy Saul in 1996. Surprisingly the pair had not been active in the pet adoption world before, but decided as a New Year's resolution during Christmas 1995 that they should use their computer and internet skills to do some good. So a computer program was written and animal shelters contacted, and Pet Finder started from the Saul's Pittstown, New Jersey home.

Within twelve months the Pet Finder website was receiving a thousand hits each and every day, and soon almost every shelter and home in New Jersey had joined the site as members. Thus in 1998 the website expanded to include shelters from across the United States, and whilst Jared stayed on in his radiology work, Betsy quit as an urban forester to run the company full time.

So now in its twelfth year Pet Finder has moved on to advertise in excess of two hundred thousand available pets every single day. The website displays information from ten thousand animal shelters and pounds, most of which are in North America, United States and Canada, but there is also information of pets housed elsewhere in the world.

As the website is paid for by sponsors, including pet food companies and private donations, the site is free to join and search, although the site is now owned by the Discovery Television Company. Through the website, viewers can locate many small animals, including, birds, cats, dogs and rabbits, all available for adoption. Potential owners can search the database by type of animal, breed, gender, size and age, with results shown by nearest vicinity.

There have been a huge number of successful adoptions caused by the website, an estimated ten million in the twelve years. Many of the pounds and shelters report that Pet Finder has doubled the number of people seeking to adopt. Each shelter that is a member of the site is given their own page within the site, and it is their staffs who keep the list of pets up to date.

Pet Finder has ensured that many more pets have found a new home, and as a result fewer pets have had to be put down. With new ownership it appears that pet adoption is going to be far simpler for many years to come.

Robert Grazian is an accomplished niche website developer and author.

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