Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

TABLE

Inside the boundary:	Outside the boundary:
Who is in- In this boundary are unadopted pets in the US, and animal shelters	Who is not- This boundary does not include private animal breeders or animals living is stores like Petland that breed/ adopt their own pets to sell
What the need is- The need is to have an alternate solution rather than euthanasia to deal with excess pets going through the animal shelter system	What the need is not- This need is not a pet adoption system, it is meant to be more of a temporary solution just to deal with a surplus of animals
Why the need exists- This need exists because there are so many stray animals, especially in large cities, that just live on the streets and end up getting rounded up by animal shelters with no other solution in sight, and then the shelters get way too full and must find a way, even if it’s undesirable, to deal with the extra animals	Alternative explanations- Some animals could be terminally ill, or combative to the point where they are harming other animals and humans, and they’re influencing a part of the percentage makeup of animals euthanized in the US

SUMMARY OF INTERVIEWS

For my interviews, it was actually kind of hard to find people outside the scope of the unmet need at first. I think I talked to close to a dozen people before I could finally get 5 that actually qualified. One of the people I talked to works at the Petland in Pensacola, Florida, and even though they are a pet company, they still wouldn’t fall into a category of people who would benefit from my idea because they don’t really deal with strays too much. I learned that they often have private breeders supply the pets for their stores. Another person I talked to is my roommate, and she didn’t fall in the category of people who would benefit either. She explained that while she thought it was a big issue that needed dealing with, she would not personally like to be in one of the pet hotels because she thinks it would distract her and get her too attached to a pet that in the end, she could not adopt for her to keep. This got me to talking with some of my other interviewees about the “what” part of this assignment. The need that I identified was to find an alternate solution for animal shelters to place their extra animals that did not involve euthanasia. In the interviews, I was reminded that this does not include finding homes or permanent places for the extra animals. And while it may make sense to try and go that route, I feel like that is a completely different problem with a whole other set of solutions. Finally, I came to realize that while the outsiders saw merit to my solution. their needs didn’t quite align with the solution. More specifically, some of them just still would not be able to easily be a part of the hotel type program, but they may be able to be part of helping the animals in general in other ways such as blanket donations. Overall the interviews got me to stop and think a lot more about just how my solution would work logistically and that it still may be decently difficult to find a large enough group to make it work.