Personality Match

How do most people choose a pet? Is it by species affinity? As a status symbol? Color? Size?

The ASPCA has developed a program to help people choose a pet (specifically, a dog or a cat) by matching the human's personality to the animal's personality. They call it Meet Your Match.

Under this program, each dog or cat at an animal shelter is evaluated in terms of their responses to a new environment. Then the animal is assigned one of 9 personality types, in 3 categories designated by a color card.

People coming in to adopt an animal are given a personality assessment form to fill out. Then they are given a color card based on their answers. The idea then is for them to pick an animal based on the animal's color card. Remember, there are 3 personality types within each color category.

For example, for dogs there are purple, orange, and green cards. Within the purple category there are personality types described as Couch Potato, Constant Companion, and Teacher's Pet. Adult dogs receive separate categorization from puppies.

There are also purple, orange, and green cards for cats. The purple category for cats includes Private Investigator, Secret Admirer, and Love Bug.

Further explanations can be found at the ASPCA web site. They call their personality assessments of animals Canine-ality, Puppy-ality, and Feline-ality. You can watch an animated presentation with these links: Dogs or Cats.

This is a great step forward in both recognizing the individual personalities of animals and in teaching people that animals are individuals. It's also proven in practice: they report as much as a 50% decrease in the number of animals returned to the shelter because the adoption isn't working out.