I lied...

[bunn]

OK, I said I would shut up about the OC.  I lied.  :-p

We're thinking of doing a special promotion campaign aimed at converting the heathen dogfree.  At the moment we have rather a lot of dogs (and not a few cats, actually) on the books that need to be only pets.  Usually they are animals that don't really get on too well with other dogs - OK out on a walk, but not so good at close quarters longterm. All of them, looking for homes that have no other pets (or possibly, only small caged pets or birds or something contained).  

This is difficult. People who already have pets are proven soft touches and can often be convinced to add another one. But people without pets - ah.  They are a mystery to us.   Where do they go?  Why do they not already have pets?   How do we talk them out of buying a puppy from the local paper*?

Now admittedly most of them will not have pets because they can't for some reason or just don't want to, which is fair enough.  But somewhere, there must be a pool of prospective dog owners that don't have dogs.   There is no point advertising, as we normally do, in pet shops and vets and so on, because why would they be in there?

So I'm thinking, libraries, supermarkets, post offices?  Schools maybe?  Any cunning ideas out there from non-petowning people?


* like the lovely colleague of philmophlegm's who was telling us all about her bulldog, how she had bought it relatively cheaply as a pup, but it had proved to have an amazing list of incredibly expensive ailments that ate up all her bonuses for years. 

Comments

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

To be slightly callous, perhaps - pet cemeteries? People who've just lost their dog and might like to have another, but don't want to take on a bouncy little puppy that needs training and energetic walking and so on.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That is a grim, but possibly very cunning, thought.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Well, you see, my current job is coming up with a solution, then finding the problem it solves, and only identifying the sort of person to apply it to later, if at all :-)

At the moment, for example, I'm assuming I can find a company that's really a partnership; if the idea pans out I'll find out if such things exist later.

You're after dog owners that have no dogs. What is a "dog-owner"? Someone who *habitually* owns a dog - *actually* owning one is incidental.

How about recent immigrants whose dogs are in quarantine, or couldn't be brought in to the country at all?

Of course the former is only a temporary solution, but that might be worth a go too :-)