Fact check: Sheltering truths or urban legends?

In the digital age, it’s easier than ever to share information—and equally easy to share misinformation.

We’ve all seen the memes warning that dogfighters are looking for “bait dogs” online, that people are surrendering droves of live Easter bunnies weeks after the holiday, that “pandemic pets” were returned in massive numbers once offices and travel reopened. Horrified by the idea of animals being mistreated or wantonly abandoned, we click the share icon.

But are these beliefs true? And anyway, what’s the harm in sharing them?

For starters, shelters and rescue organizations are viewed as experts on animal welfare issues. When we repeat myths or urban legends in our own communications, we lend these claims more credibility.

There’s also a trickle-down effect on the people working and volunteering in animal shelters and rescues. Messages that present the community as a widespread threat to animals foster an attitude of distrust and suspicion of the public. Beliefs that are rooted in conscious or unconscious biases—such as the myth that certain demographics are less likely to spay or neuter their pets for “cultural reasons”—affect how we engage with our communities.

Whether you can call them urban legends, myths or false generalizations, they have real-world impacts on your customer service, your sheltering policies and your organization’s reputation as a resource center. People in the community you serve become less likely to donate, adopt or come to you for help.

So before you repost that meme or change your policies based on a rumor, take the time to examine the facts.

How to sift fact from fiction

Not all sheltering myths are the same: Some—such as the belief that people adopt black cats for satanic rituals—have no evidence supporting them. Others may have some supporting data from a few organizations but not enough to call fact or representative of most animal shelters.

Myths also often rely on a cause-and-effect relationship, something that’s difficult to prove. Another challenge in fact-checking: It’s nearly impossible to say a certain event has never occurred.

But calling a belief an “urban legend” or “myth” doesn’t mean there’s never been a documented case of it happening. Regional trends and isolated incidents certainly pop up. The problem arises when shelters and rescue groups use rare events to justify sweeping policies, such as rigid adoption restrictions. Or when organizations make false assumptions about the people they serve and fail to identify root problems, such as lack of access to affordable spay/neuter services.

The animal welfare field is always evolving, and so is our collective knowledge. In decades past, we often based our beliefs on anecdotes or false assumptions. (We at the Humane Society of the United States have been guilty of this too!) But as our field has professionalized, we’ve learned the importance of using data collection and sound research to evaluate our beliefs and increase our effectiveness.

In our ongoing fact-checking series, we examine some widely held beliefs in the sheltering field, using national sheltering data such as Shelter Animals Count reports, peer-reviewed research and insights from experts.