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ASPCA®’s Meet Your Match®: Canine-ality™ 101
What Is Canine-ality™?
Knowing a bit about a dog before bringing him home can really help the romance last. How do we know this? The Meet Your Match (MYM) Canine-ality Adoption Program (MYM), our new color coding method for matching shelter dogs, ages six months and older, with adopters, is making it possible for you to know a little about a dog’s behavior before deciding to make him a part of your family. Finding the perfect pooch is a serious undertaking. That’s why we developed the MYM program—to help match the colors of your personality to your new friend’s canine-ality.
Shelters using MYM are reporting reduced return rates, better customer service and increased adoptions. This tells us that our science-based program is helping people to make good adoption choices. That means lives are being saved!
How Does Canine-ality work?
Every dog has a colorful canine-ality. Every person has a colorful person-ality. The Canine-ality Adoption Program reveals both a dog’s and an adopter’s true colors so that you can make a more informed choice about the pooch you bring home. Here’s how:
- The Canine-ality Assessment
- The Dog Adopter Survey
The Canine-ality Assessment: This assessment takes some of the mystery out of the selection process by evaluating a pooch’s:
- Friendliness and sociability
- Playfulness
- Energy level and ability to focus
- Motivation (food, people, toys, internal motivations, etc.)
- “People manners”
Once they’ve been assessed, dogs are given a color—either green, orange or purple—that reveals where they stand in each of these areas.
The Dog Adopter Survey: Here’s where you come in. You can complete this fun one-pager in a matter of minutes to help find out which canine-alities get along best with your personality. The survey is lighthearted and upbeat, and after taking it, you’ll find out what color you are.
- Green adopters are most successful with pooches who like to be physically and mentally engaged.
- Orange adopters are a good fit with middle-of-the-road dogs who are responsive and enjoy regular activity and interaction.
- Purple adopters are comfortable with canines who have a laidback attitude and prefer an easygoing lifestyle.
Now you’re off—with a color-coded guest pass in hand—to find your new companion. As you pass each furry face, you’ll notice the dogs have color cards on their cages. You don’t have to choose a pooch whose color matches yours—love at first sight does happen. But knowing the color lets you at least prepare for the way your four-legged love will respond when he gets home.
Meet the Canine-alities
Who says it’s not easy being green? Do you blend best with orange types? Maybe you’ve got a case of the purples.
The way a pooch scores on the Canine-ality Assessment places her in one of three color-coded categories (just like you!), each representing her level of persistence in going after something she wants.
- A green pooch can either be the life of the party, a go-getter or a free spirit.
- An orange pooch may be a wallflower, a busy bee or a goofball.
- And a purple pooch can be classified as a couch potato, a constant companion or a teacher’s pet.
There’s every combination of love out there, so go for it. Who knows, maybe your forever pooch will help express a new shade of you!
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