How the adoptable pets list works

What this is

Most shelters in North Carolina already post the pets they have for adoption, each on its own site and in its own way. This page puts those lists side by side so a family can see every pet near them in one place, then adopt through the shelter.

Where the pets come from

Counts and dates from our latest daily check. Pets still on a stray hold are not counted.

How we read it

• Once a day, early in the morning.
• One request at a time, with a pause between requests, following each site's robots.txt.
• Our requests say who we are: DirigoCreative-NCPetProject/1.0, with this site and an email address.
• Public pages only. No logins, passwords or hidden keys.
• We copy each pet's name, one small photo and the basics the shelter lists: type, breed, sex, age, size, whether the pet is in a foster home and whether an adoption is pending. Everything else stays on the shelter's site, and every pet links back to it.
• The Near ZIP filter measures a straight line from the center of your ZIP code to the shelter's address. Pets in foster homes are counted at their shelter, and your ZIP stays in your browser.
• Most rescue groups keep their pets in foster homes and list only their town, so for those pets we measure to that town and the card says "about" how many miles away the pet is.
• If a shelter's site cannot be read one morning, we keep showing the last list we got and say when we last checked.

Listings and removal

Every listing comes from the public adoption list a shelter or rescue already publishes, as shown in the table above. We link each pet back to its shelter or rescue, which handles the adoption, so your adoptions stay yours.

If you run a shelter or rescue and want your listings removed, or something here is wrong, email info@ncpetproject.org. We will take your listings off at the next daily update and delete the photos we copied, or fix the mistake.

Want to be added, or to send us your list directly? The easiest way is a small file in our open feed format, updated once a day. We can also read a list you already publish.

For the state

No North Carolina rule requires public shelters to publish the animals they have for adoption. The state's shelter rules, 02 NCAC 52J, set standards for care and records, not public listings. One shared daily feed would let anyone build tools like this one and help people find pets in their own county.

Questions

Email info@ncpetproject.org. Our combined list in the feed format is at /adopt/feed.json.