In Spain, dog and cat adoptions just hit their lowest point since the pandemic.
Last year, 285.720 dogs and cats arrived at shelters, but only 120.000 got lucky.
That’s four out of ten animals found a home (Fundación Affinity, 2025)
Three years after Spain’s Animal Welfare Law “Ley del Bienestar Animal” promised to cut abandonment, the numbers still aren’t improving.
And this one stays with me:
35% of families who were interested in adopting never did.
Somewhere between “I’d love a dog” to “yes, I’d like to adopt X” gets lost.
In Italy, they are testing new ways to improve that with Empethy, a startup that is working on solving that gap.
Their app matches dogs and cats with people by compatibility: lifestyle, time, space, other animals at home. You can’t adopt on the site itself. Every request goes to the shelter caring for the animal, through a pre-adoption form. The app’s job is to help people choose well before they ask.
And this weekend, they are taking this idea off the screen and into a park.
If you are reading me from Italy,
check this event:
📍 AdottaMi, 3 and 4 October, Parco Sempione, Milan
Free entry, 10:00 to 17:00. Organised with the local association AreaCani Milano and supported by the City of Milan.
And I’m in love with the entire campaign:
1️⃣ Before the event, influencers are visiting shelters, meeting dogs and introducing them to their followers. That reaches people who weren’t even planning to adopt.
2️⃣ At the park, more than 70 dogs will arrive with their volunteer tutors. On stage, each dog will be presented by personality, history, habits and needs, with the influencers sharing every minute of the event.
3️⃣ In the speed-date corner, visitors sit down with dog trainers and vets and ask the honest questions. Will he/she cope alone while I’m at work? How will he/she get on with my cat/dog?
4️⃣ After the event, you continue with that dog’s shelter through the normal pre-adoption process. The park is where you meet. The adoption gets done properly afterwards.
Around it, there are plenty of brands sponsoring the event like Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Gruppo Animalia, Gruppo Unipol, Kippy and Italo Treno covering what comes after adoption: food, health, insurance, safety and travel.
And Italo is the part I find the most interesting and which I already talked about previously (link in comments).
Since 2022, this Italian train company has given free weekly tickets to Empethy’s volunteers, who use them to bring adopted dogs and cats to their new families, often from shelters in the south to homes in the north. And the trains also carry flyers with a QR code to their app, with more than 150 animals passengers can adopt.
➡️ A transport company that treats the trip home as part of the adoption.
Spain has many shelters, volunteers and families who want to adopt.
But is still missing the bridge that turns interest into a match.
Could this model work here? I can guess 🧡
LinkedIn original post: www.linkedin.com/in/angels-bosch
