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Counting Animal Welfare’s Market Share for Dog Acquisitions

Updated: Jan 11

Over the last few months, I have been able to reach out to, and chat with, so many people in animal welfare with whom I haven’t spoken in years. It has been energizing to reconnect and hear what people are up to. One of those people was Joyce Briggs (If you don’t know Joyce, see her bio HERE). We got into conversation about the work she is doing; and her theory that the long-held industry belief that around 30% of dogs in our community originate from shelters might be significantly overestimated. She shared her research, presenting additional assumptions that I hadn’t before considered. 

Why is this important? Understanding shelter statistics within the context of our communities’ supply and demand of dogs provides a perspective many of us don’t often consider. The number and type of dogs entering (through birth or import) your community has repercussions on the need for safety net services and our ability to rehome the dogs in our care.

To cover this topic effectively, it was impossible to put everything into the blog, so I asked Joyce to create a document to fully explain the methodology and provide examples. The document is linked HERE, I hope readers take a look and use this tool to calculate estimates for supply and demand where you live. In the meantime, here are some highlights.

The two key factors Joyce introduced that challenge the conventional way we previously calculated acquisitions were:


  • Turnover and replacement of dogs each year: Given an average life span of 11 years, approximately 9% of the dog population turns over each year. If the dog population stays relatively the same, those dogs are replaced. ‘New’ dogs mean they were born that year or (for the community’s purposes) transferred in from out of the area. Shelters aren’t typically the origin for new puppies – even counting any dog under a year passing through shelters and all transferred dogs, leads to under 10% share of new dogs from shelters.

  • Dogs ‘recirculate’ within communities: This is when older dogs are rehomed to another family, either through the shelter, or otherwise. Shelters play a major and important role in this, but those dogs do not replenish the population. Shelters have a much larger share of market for these acquisitions, but the volume and percentage of the dog population ’recirculating’ is likely much smaller than ‘new’ dogs joining the population each year. 


In Joyce’s paper, she walks through three examples, the entire US, the state of New Hampshire and the state of Louisiana:

If we agree with the findings that other sources account for an even larger percentage of the dogs in our communities, what does that change? We can look at how we compete while at the same time realizing we will likely never be the dominant source. 


  • Our aim is for all adoptable shelter dogs to find a home, NOT for all dogs to come from a shelter. Our greatest lifesaving successes are contingent on reduced intake.

  • Perhaps the sheer volume of dogs entering homes each year provides an even wider set of potential homes to approach to adopt dogs, than we envisioned.

  • It’s important our communities have access to ’new’ dogs, who are healthy and behaviorally safe. How does that happen?


Both Joyce and I would be thrilled if this blog inspires even more conversation about how we approach pet acquisition beyond our shelters. I know that so many folks in the animal welfare industry are deeply involved in trying to address this. Ensuring we understand the numbers is key to finding solutions and measuring impact.



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