Vetstreet.com is a site dedicated to providing pet owners with trusted, authoritative health information about their companion animals. They also understand how important it is for potential pet parents to select a breed that fits their needs, lifestyle, and home environment. That’s why they’ve launched an innovative new tool that will help people looking to adopt a pet in their search for the ideal mate.
UPDATE (2023): This breed finder tool is no longer accessible on Vetstreet's website.
Our Breed Finder is the name of the new tool on vetstreet.com that uses comprehensive breed profile data to supply users with an accurate cat or dog breed that best matches their needs based on their ratings of specific pet characteristics. The tool requires that users rate the characteristics that are important to them. They can rate the following traits:
- Apartment friendliness
- Affection level
- Barking tendencies
- Cat, child, and other dog-friendliness
- Grooming requirements
- Exercise needs
- Intelligence
- Shedding level
- Playfulness
- Social needs
- Territoriality
- Stranger friendliness
- Trainability
- Watchdog ability
RELATED: Sunday's Recap: Adopting a Dog That Fits Your Lifestyle
Based on the responses of the user, the Our Breed Finder tool can supposedly create a list of breeds that would be appropriate matches for the potential adopter.
Thousands of pets are returned or surrendered to shelters every year because they didn’t fit into their adoptive family’s lifestyle. Before you judge people who have to do this, you need to understand that it isn’t just hard on the dogs; it’s usually just as hard on the people that have to give them up. It is an extremely hard decision to make, but ultimately what is the right choice? Should you send a dog back to a shelter to find a more appropriate home where he will be much happier or keep him for the rest of his life knowing that you’re not happy with the situation and in turn neither is he?
You can save yourself this heartbreaking decision by doing a little bit of research before you select a pet for adoption, and this new online tool from vetstreet.com could be a huge help. Each breed profile gives the user a list of typical breed characteristics along with a gallery of photos, a history of the breeds development, an overview of the breed, health and grooming requirements, and personality information. Our Breed Finder will even give the user advice on how to find the right dog or cat for their family.
Most cat breeds recognized by the Cat Fanciers’ Association and dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club have profiles on the website. Their database includes information on 48 cat breeds and 228 breeds of dogs. Dottie Normile, VMD and chief medical officer for Vetstreet, says that it took over four years to put all the information together, and the breed profile pages are one of the most popular areas of the website. Now the new tool allows readers to engage with those pages in a fun way.
RELATED: How to Choose a Dog Breed: Make the Best Choice
Vetstreet.com was launched back in August of 2011 and it has quickly become one of the fastest growing pet health websites on the internet. In July of this year, Webtrends reported more than 3 million unique visitors viewed the site. Articles on the site are written, developed, and reviewed by professional journalists, animal health experts, and veterinarians.
I’m glad to see that this site is trying to educate potential pet parents about the importance of choosing a breed that fits their lifestyle. Selecting the right breed can mean the difference between a dog having an excellent quality of life with a family that enjoys being around him or a dog spending all his time in a kennel because his family cannot handle his energy level.
