Positive Messages Save More Lives: Finding Miracles in the Mess

Walking this morning as the sun rose and the cows on either side of our dirt road watched me warily, I thought about attitude. How it can make or break a day, a situation, a life, really.

Right now, things are as hard as I’ve seen them in our shelters and rescues. And we’ve all been over the reasons. But at this point, the reasons don’t matter. What matters is where we go from here.

And that will hinge, mightily I believe, on our attitude.

Paraphrasing (I’m sure incorrectly) something I heard on a podcast this morning on that same walk, “We get so caught up in the messes that we can’t see the miracles.”

And there are miracles.

I scroll through my Facebook feed and see dire situation after dire situation in shelter after shelter, but I also see the miracles. The dog adopted after 284 days in the shelter. The donations that resulted in a shelter finally getting air conditioning. The fosters who stepped up to take in dogs when their shelter flooded. The ordinary human beings helping in big ways and small ones.

I will confess that too often, I scroll quickly past all the hard stuff, the painful posts that I feel helpless to do anything about. I know I’m not the only one. I have vested interest in helping the shelters, but when the problem seems so vast, it is disheartening. I look away. And if I’m looking away, you can bet the average dog-loving, potential adopter, donor, or rescuer does too.

It’s human nature to gravitate toward the positive. So, with that in mind, here are a few suggestions for those of you in charge of the social media and/or the messaging for your shelter or rescue:

1. Strive to post 75% positive stories – cute pictures, funny videos, educational info, etc. Share your adoptable dogs, name/stats/pics, but don’t lament how long that dog has been there or how much he/she deserves a good home (those are givens), celebrate the dog instead, make him a rockstar.
2. In that other 25%, you can ask for help, but BE SPECIFIC. Don’t just as for money, explain what it’s for and how it will make a difference for your dogs. Or post your Amazon wishlist and say which items you need most. Have a volunteer need – say exactly what the job is.
3. Post simple, positive videos: playing fetch, play groups activities in general, feeding a pupcup to a dog, sit/stay training, any kind of enrichment, quirky habits, loading up for a transport, etc. Think ‘a day in the life’ videos for the dogs, the volunteers, the staff.
4. Feature your volunteers regularly – showcasing what they are doing and how many people are helping will encourage others to volunteer also. They see it happening, especially people having fun with dogs, and they envision themselves there. Celebrate how long a volunteer has been there, have a volunteer challenge for miles walked in a week/month, create reasons to highlight the work of your volunteers.
5. Same for your employees. Find reasons to share their work and their personalities. Ride along with an ACO. Video an intake.
6. Highlight adoptions. You can video the adoption, interview the adopter (and the dog!), present them with ‘adoption day’ gift. Have an area set up to stage adoption pictures and post them to social media. You might even print the pictures and create an adoption wall. If you’re in a small town, ask the local paper if they will fun adoption day pictures.
7. Take a dog for a walk and video from his angle (if you’ve got the means to acquire or borrow a go-pro, all the better).
8. Take pictures of your dogs with an iphone with the live feature on and use them to create reels. The slight movement makes it fun. Be sure to add music.
9. Do a Facebook/Instagram/Tiktok live walk-through of your kennels showing off all your animals. This is a great feature to do weekly to encourage people to come in to see the dogs.
10. When someone or a business brings donations to the shelter take a video or picture and post it with a big thank you. If something is delivered, you can still take a picture with the items and a staff/volunteer/animal and post a thank you (be sure to tag the business).

SIDEBAR: Speaking of Amazon wishlists, be sure your link is prominently displayed on your website and social media pages, so supporters can easily find it. Often when we are posting about a specific shelter, I have to search far and wide or email the shelter to get the link.

ANOTHER SIDEBAR: Keep your Amazon wishlist up to date, and edit it to reflect what is highest priority and how many you need of each item.

These are just ten ideas for positive posting. I’m sure you’ve got others. Please share them in the comments.

Maybe you’re rolling your eyes and thinking this is Pollyannaish, but we need to rise to the challenge of this moment. We won’t turn the tide by lamenting how we go here or how bad things are, we will turn it by finding the miracles in the mess—and then focusing on those miracles to make them multiply.

Until each one has a home,

Cara

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To see our Emmy-nominated, award-winning short documentary, Amber’s Halfway Home, click here. If you’d like to see it on the big screen (along with other short dog films), check out the tour schedule of The Dog Film Festival, currently in art movie houses all over the country.

Learn more about what is happening in our southern shelters and rescues in the book, One Hundred Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books, 2020). It’s the story of a challenging foster dog who inspired me to travel south to find out where all the dogs were coming from. It tells the story of how Who Will Let the Dogs Out began. Find it anywhere books are sold.

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