Can Black Dogs Break The Color Barrier?

By Christie Keith, Special to SF GateTuesday, August 11, 2009

Black may be beautiful, but when it comes to dogs of a darker hue, potential adopters often overlook them -- especially if they're big.

If you're like me, you probably chose your dog based on something like the melting feeling you got when he held one ear up and one ear downthe first time he looked at you, not the color of his coat. But when Petfinder.com, an online database of more than 300,000 adoptable pets, declared August 12 national "Adopt-A-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day," they discovered that finding homes for black dogs, particularly larger ones, was a real problem for their 12,681 member shelters and rescue groups.

"In our July 2009 survey, 54.2 percent of our respondents told us that they had experienced 'big black dog syndrome,' where pets were harder to place for that very reason," said Kim Saunders, head of shelter outreach and public relations for Petfinder.com.

The good news is that black dogs have a lot of friends. Petfinder launched a campaign telling adopters that dark furred pets make it easier to accessorize. "After all," said Saunders, "black goes with everything!" The Black Pearl Dogs Website offers rescue groups aplace to list their available black dogs and tries to educate the public about the problem. And last month, PR and marketing expert Heather Rosenwald launched Start Seeing Black Dogs, which offers free marketing and PR services to help shelters and rescue groups put their available black dogs in the best possible light to potential adopters.

"It's not that people are rejecting black shelter dogs out of hand,"said Rosenwald, who owns two adopted big black dogs of her own. "It's that they just don't realize the problem exists. Whenever I do some kind of public education, like appearing on a radio show, and talk about black dogs, there's an immediate increase in the adoption of those dogs from the local shelters and rescue groups."

It's hard to make sense of the difficulty in finding homes for black dogs. After all, black Labs, along with their yellow siblings, are the most popular dog breed in America. And not only is the current Presidential pet -- Bo the Portuguese water dog -- a black-furred dog, but in a show of astonishing bi-partisanship, so was former President Bush's dog Barney, a Scottish Terrier.

This may be a problem not of black dogs in general but of black shelter dogs in particular. "The fact that black Labs are so popular might be part of the problem," Rosenwald said. "There are so many of them that when you get into a shelter setting, they're kind of a dime a dozen."

It also could just be a matter of lighting. "Some shelters aren't very well lit," she continued, "and that makes black dogs literally harder to see. We really encourage shelters and rescue groups to show them off in well-lit areas whenever possible."

Because many people start their search for a new dog on the Web, it'scritical that organizations do a careful job of photographing their darker pets. "We've heard from many potential adopters that it's hard to see the faces and get a feeling for the personalities of black dogs in photographs -- we call it 'black blob syndrome.'" The fact that black dogs' facial features, expression and eyes can be very hard to see might give their lighter-colored competition an edge online.

Taking good photos of black pets is easy to learn, however. "We've puttogether great tips for point and click cameras, which most shelters and rescue groups use," Rosenwald told me. "Our pointers will help them get great photos of black dogs with a simple camera. And in photos or in person, shelters really need to bedazzle adopters with something colorful, like a bandana or vest. Make the dark dogs stand out any way you can."

Unfortunately, it's not all just a trick of the light. "Some people subconsciously see black dogs as menacing," Rosenwald said. "Which is unfortunate and also untrue. Black dogs are just as affectionate and wonderful as dogs of any other color. There is no correlation between personality and behavior and coat color."

Anne Hendrickson, who runs a boarding kennel and dog day care center in Minneapolis, saw "big black dog" syndrome in action a few years ago. "I fostered a litter of homeless puppies for an animal rescue group," she said. "The litter had one black puppy and the rest blonds. Needless to say, the blond puppies were spoken for immediately, but the one black pup wasn't adopted."

Hendrickson, who had adopted two black dogs before learning about"black dog syndrome," decided to add Cobie to her "black pack."

"They say in your life you will have one dog who is 'the one,'" shetold me. "Cobie is my 'one.' He's four years old and a certified therapy dog, and we spend our days helping disadvantaged children learn to read at schools, shelters, youth detention centers. Goes to show what a great dog you can be missing out on by passing up a blackdog."

Some shelters have turned "big black dog syndrome" into a marketing opportunity instead of an obstacle. "Our animal care workers noticedthat we were inundated with wonderful black dogs who weren't finding homes as easily as other dogs," said Hope Hancock, director of the SPCA of Wake County in North Carolina.

The shelter staff came up with what they called the "Black Dog Blue Light Special" campaign.

"This was a real grassroots campaign," said Hancock. "It didn't originate in our marketing department, but from the people who were working hands-on with the adoptable dogs."

The workers strung blue Christmas lights in the adoption area, made up cards describing the dogs' personalities and giving them a little pizzazz, and even ran ads that gave "blue light special" a literal spin: they manipulated the photos to turn the black dogs blue. When some people saw the ads and assumed the dogs had been painted blue, they contacted the shelter with outraged complaints -- giving the SPCA an opportunity to do a little education about "black dog sydndrome."

And the grassroots campaign was a success. "The dogs went flying out of here," Hancock said. The shelter even won a $10,000 award in a marketing competition for promoting adoptions of hard-to-place pets.

I'm not saying that everyone reading this has to run out and adopt a black dog. Choosing a dog is a lot like falling in love: a matter of chemistry more than rational choice. If the dog who captures your heart is red, white, tan, or speckled, there's nothing wrong with that.

But the next time you're checking out available dogs on the Web or walking through the kennels in your local shelter, keep your eye out for the love in the eye of a dog of a darker hue.

"That's all we're really asking," said Rosenwald. "Start seeing black dogs."