Is this ‘eHarmony’ for pets your perfect match?
Looking for a cuddle buddy?
As technology has changed, and the stigma of online dating has faded, people are increasingly turning to the Internet to find the perfect companion, whether that be a man, woman or dog.
The online pet-finder portal PawsLikeMe recently launched nationwide and touts an “online dating” approach to finding a pet.
Much like a personality test on a dating site, the company uses a “Pet Compatibility Test” to match a potential pet owner with a dog that suits their personality and lifestyle. Users can narrow their search results by size or breed. The pets are pulled from local partner shelters or people re-homing their animals.
Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO of the company, used to work in the tech industry and ran a rescue for eight years. Holmes said within the rescue and local shelters she saw many potential pet owners looking for a particular breed of dog, regardless of whether that animal was “ideal” for their lifestyle.
“There is a personality that a dog has and that all animals have that is very individual and goes beyond breed characteristics,” she said.
The personality quiz takes 3-5 minutes and focuses on traits that “influence the human-canine bond,” and accounts for potential caregivers’ lifestyles, according to Holmes. The quiz is matched against a canine personality test that the pet's caregiver or owner takes on behalf of the animal.
The idea of matching your personality to another person, or, in this case, a dog, is “intuitively appealing,” says John D. Mayer, a Professor of Psychology at the University of New Hampshire. But he notes research is mixed on how important finding the perfect match for pets because cat and dog personality scales are “a fairly recent innovation.”
Like many people looking for a new dog, Shannon Reeder, of Melbourne, Fla., had a mental checklist. She wanted a Rottweiler, but she also wanted to make sure it was a rescue, got along with her daughter and her 2-year-old Rottweiler mix.
She met the former owners of her dog, Loki, who were using PawsLikeMe to re-home their pet.
“We met the owners at a dog park, in a social place and were able to bring our daughter and the other dog,” she said. “The dogs ran around and instantly we knew.”
Almost 4 million dogs are taken in by shelters each year, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Holmes said many pets will be "re-homed," or surrendered to a shelter in their lifetimes.
She said there is a misplaced stigma that surrounds “shelter pets,” and her hope is that PawsLikeMe will make the shelter the last resort for current pet owners who can no longer care for their animal.
“People often think that if the pet was abandoned something wrong with the pet,” she said. “In our experience many times the issue tends to be a mismatch between the family and pet, as opposed to the pet.”
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