CHAMPAIGN — Every year, around 6.3 million pets enter U.S. animal shelters nationwide, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Spending time in a shelter can be stressful for animals, so the Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS) is hoping a new partnership will help them find pets new homes — avoiding shelters entirely.
CCHS is teaming up with an online platform called Home To Home.
People looking to rehome their animals can post their information about their pet, and what they’re looking for in an adopter, on the Home To Home website. The adoption supervisor for CCHS screens posts made for pets in Champaign County, to make sure all the necessary information is included and the posting is not suspicious. For example, people should not be using the site to sell animals for payment, or en masse.
“Once we check it out, we go ahead and take it live, and your animal is posted on our page of Champaign County Pets,” Tiefenbrunn said. “It’s also available to anybody that uses Home To Home to search for pets in this area.”
Pets will stay with their owners until an interested adopter contacts them. The adoption process is done exclusively between the pet owner and the adopter, with no involvement from CCHS itself.
Tiefenbrunn notes that there’s an eight-week wait to surrender dogs to CCHS, and Home To Home offers a quicker solution by helping owners rehome pets directly. This approach has successfully placed three dogs in new homes already.
“That’s the result that we were looking for. We want to provide people this option while they are waiting to surrender their pet, and during that time find a home,” Tiefenbrunn explained. “That saves the animal the stress of coming into the shelter, and it gives us space to continue to serve the animals that urgently need to come in.”
Tiefenbrunn adds that Home To Home helps build better connections between pet owners and adopters, making the whole process smoother and more personal.
“You can be more involved in the process and have a better sense of security about where your pet has gone,” Tiefenbrunn said.
People interested in adopting can find pet listings in the Champaign-Urbana area on the Humane Society’s website.