NEW YORK CITY, NY. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – It’s that time of year when love is in the air. Can you remember back to what drew you to your special someone? Was it their energy? Their smile? Or their adorable face? Did you find each other in person, or did you swipe right to virtually meet your match?
Now, there is an innovative service that links people with their perfect furry fit.
Is it chemistry? Or personality? The traits that create a great partnership… can also help match a person to the perfect pet.
Jodi Andersen, the co-founder of How I Met My Dog, says her secret is, “The assessing is the magic. That’s, that’s really our secret sauce.”
Andersen is an expert in dog behavior and co-founder of How I Met My Dog. It’s an online site that matches shelter dogs and dogs that need to be re-homed, with people who are ready to adopt.
Shelter workers fill out an online survey that details the pet’s personality. Adoptees answer a survey of 56 questions, based on three categories.
Andersen explains how the process is designed, “So, ‘pet’ is really the categories that we match on, and P stands for personality. Expectations is the E, and the T is training style.”
A complex computer algorithm matches pets with their potential humans. The Calves family had three kids, a cat named Frank Sinatra, and golden labradoodle, Tybee (tie-bee)… but two years ago, Frank died. Then Tybee got sick.
”All of a sudden the house felt very empty,” Herbie Calves explained to Ivanhoe News.
The family filled out a How I Met My Dog survey and matched with Casper, a Jack Russell mix they admit they never would have picked at first sight.
”He makes us laugh all the time and we need that actually,” Herbie states.
And in what Andersen calls the logical next step, they’ve launched a companion site, called Competibility. Competibility offers customized tips for improving current pet relationships based on your personality and your dogs too.
”It’s marriage therapy. It’s exactly what it is,” Andersen jokes.
Giving pets and their people a new leash on life. How I Met My Dog works with over 400 shelters in 39 states. They do not match people with dogs from breeders or pet shops.
Andersen says traditionally, about 15% of all dogs from shelters are returned by adoptive owners. Dogs matched though How I Met My Dog are only returned about 5% of the time.
There is no charge for the matching service or the new advice website, Competibility. By the way, Andersen is the fur mom to two rescue dogs, Finn and Stella, and she and her husband met on a human matching website.