TruthfulPaws Where the numbers come from.
The TruthfulPaws Adoption Data Project draws on two public data sources: Petfinder for listing-level data on individual animals, and Shelter Animals Count for aggregate outcome data at the shelter and state level. Together they cover the vast majority of US shelter and rescue activity.
Petfinder listings
What it is: Petfinder aggregates active adoption listings from approximately 11,000 US shelters and rescue organizations. Each listing represents one animal, with structured fields (species, breed, age, sex, behavioral attributes) plus a free-form description and zero-or-more photos.
What we collect:
Cadence: daily scrape of active inventory. Diff against the previous snapshot to detect new listings and disappearances. Time-on-list is computed from first-to-last observation.
License: public listings, scraped via the public search interface. We do not republish individual listings, raw descriptions, or photos. All findings on the hub are aggregate statistics.
Shelter Animals Count
What it is: a national database of US shelter intake and outcome statistics, with reporting from approximately 7,000 organizations. SAC publishes state-aggregated counts of intakes, live releases, transfers, returns to owner, and euthanasia on a quarterly cadence.
How we use it: SAC is the primary source for the euthanasia findings on this site (the marquee, dog finding 06, cat finding 04). Petfinder listings can't reliably measure euthanasia — animals euthanized before listing never enter the Petfinder dataset, and post-listing euthanasia is indistinguishable from successful adoption when a listing simply disappears. SAC reflects what shelters report actually happened to animals in their care. We also use SAC as a reality check against the Petfinder-derived adoption-speed findings.
Specific dataset used: the SAC public 2-year aggregate file (2024 + 2025), which combines self-reported counts from approximately 7,000 organizations with SAC's machine-learning estimates for organizations with incomplete data. State-level totals reflect all reporting orgs in that state.
License: SAC's data-use agreement reserves redistribution rights for the underlying records. We use the SAC public aggregate dataset and cite SAC as the source on every finding derived from it. We do not publish raw SAC data on the site. Researchers wanting access to SAC data should request it directly from shelteranimalscount.org.
Refresh cadence
- Petfinder listings: daily scrape. Cohort statistics on the hub are recomputed on the first of each month.
- SAC outcome data: quarterly. We update validation cross-checks when each new quarterly release lands.
- Findings on the hub: recomputed monthly. The "Last updated" date in the hero reflects the most recent cohort cut.
- Methodology page: updated when methodology changes, not when data refreshes. Methodology changes are documented inline.
Coverage gaps
- Petfinder org participation grew 66% across the period: the platform had ~5,800 unique orgs posting in Q1 2024 and ~9,600 in Q4 2025. Year-over-year listing-volume comparisons therefore reflect platform growth as much as shelter activity. SAC's national intake figures for 2024 and 2025 are nearly identical, confirming this isn't a real change in shelter-system activity. The hub uses SAC for cross-year volume comparisons and Petfinder for time-on-list and per-listing characteristics.
- Pre-listing animals: animals euthanized before listing — overwhelmingly those with severe medical or behavioral issues — are not visible to Petfinder-based analysis. Findings about which animals adopt fastest generalize to listed inventory.
- Non-Petfinder shelters: some larger shelters maintain their own listing platforms and do not syndicate to Petfinder. Those animals are out of our dataset; SAC outcome data covers them at the aggregate level.
Questions or data requests
Methodology questions, requests for cleaned cohort cuts, or academic data-sharing inquiries: john@truthfulpaws.com.