Austin Animal Center Data — What Kinds of Animals Should Be Adopted?
Austin Animal Center Data Displays Trends in Kinds of Animals to Adopt
Every animal deserves a warm and love-filled place to call their forever home. Sadly, a lot of animals still exist in shelters and dream of meeting a devoted family to offer them an ideal forever home environment. This depressing news continues to get worse as more animals fall into the shelter life situation each year. Since 2010, one animal shelter, the Austin Animal Center (in Austin, TX), has added approximately 20,000 new animals every year. What can be done to provide for that many new animals along with the animals already sheltered? What information can be obtained about shelter animals and what adoption suggestions should people listen to in order to have more animals adopted? In this blog, I used the Austin Animal Shelter as an example shelter to represent all animal shelters.
Since October is “Adopt a Shelter Dog” month, I decided to do some analyses of animals that have been in and out of the Austin Animal Center between 2019-present to determine if patterns exist in the kinds of animals up for adoption. Hopefully this effort will result in having more animals adopted at the shelter. From my analyses, I found that relationships were evident regarding what kinds of animals were in need of adoption. In the following blog, I am going to discuss the kinds of animals most in need of adoption based off of analyses of the animals that have come and gone from the shelter from 2019-present. I will specifically talk about the most common intake ages of animals up for adoption, the breeds of animals that have had the longest stays from 2019-present, and the breeds of animals with the most amount of records between 2019-present as well as how all these details about shelter animals influence adoptions. With my conclusions, I want to impact the adoption of more animals by recommending the kinds of animals for people to adopt at the Austin Animal Center from these analyses.
The data for my examination of the Austin Animal Center came from https://data.world/siyeh/austin-animal-center-live-data. The data contains both an intakes dataset and an outcomes dataset. I joined the two datasets on animal ID to specifically look at the shelter animals that have been taken in to the Austin Animal Center and had an outcome of some type from the Austin Animal Center. I created a Tableau dashboard with my findings to show my analyses of this animal shelter. To follow along with the dashboard (or hover over the data displayed), go to https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/james.stipanowich/viz/AustinAnimalShelterAnalysis1/AustinAnimalShelterAnalyses.
What Intake Ages of Animals Exist in the Greatest Quantities at the Austin Animal Center From 2019-Present?
One aspect of a shelter animal that might influence whether or an animal gets adopted is the intake age. From my knowledge, younger shelter animals or animals with a higher probability of a lower intake age tend to be adopted more frequently than older animals or animals with a higher probability of a higher intake age. On the dashboard I created, I inspected the top ten most common intake ages of all the animals that were in and out of the Austin Animal Center between 2019-present to establish if there is some truth to my belief. My findings are detailed on the chart on my dashboard and shown below:
By hovering over the values on the boxes of my chart and noticing the sizes of the boxes, I discovered the three most common intake ages at the Austin Animal Center from 2019-present were 2 years old (8,735 records), 1 year old (7,427 records) and 1 month old (4,078 records). These results could mean that most of the animals to go through the Austin Animal Center between 2019-present were younger. Younger animals probably make up the greatest number of shelter animals from my data analysis. This information contradicts the idea that most animals at shelters are older animals. Animals with an intake age of 2 years old, 1 years old, and 1 month old exist in the greatest quantities at the Austin Animal Center and can be said to be most in need of adoption for that reason.
What Breeds of Animals Have Exhibited the Longest Stays at the Austin Animal Center Between 2019-Present?
The length of a stay for a shelter animal at a shelter can strongly influence the chance of a shelter animal being adopted. Animals with longer stays tend to be less likely to be adopted. On the dashboard I developed, I formulated a new field in the data titled, “Length of Stay” to look exactly at the length of stay of a shelter animal. This field calculates the amount of days an animal has been at a shelter by subtracting the outcome date for the shelter animal from the intake date for the shelter animal. Also, I desired to know what breeds of shelter animals have the longest length of stays at the Austin Animal Center. I summed up the total lengths of stay for each breed between 2019-present. I plotted the top 10 breeds with the longest lengths of stay at the Austin Animal Center from 2019-present using a highlight table on my Tableau dashboard. The highlight table on my dashboard is below:
The darker boxes showed higher length of stay values by day for breeds of animals. The three breeds with the longest lengths of stay at the Austin Animal Center between 2019-present were Pit Bull Mix dogs (566,593 days total), Labrador Retriever Mix dogs (377,891 days total), and Domestic Shorthair Mix cats (364,061 days total). These three breeds are most in need of adoption at the Austin Animal Center because they have the greatest length of stays between 2019-present and would usually not be the animals to be adopted.
What Breeds of Animals Have the Most Records of Existence at the Austin Animal Center Between 2019-Present?
A shelter animal breed that exists in high quantities at the Austin Animal Center is definitely in need of adoption. The greater amount of a breed at a shelter, the more animals of that breed in need of adoption. The final section of my Austin Animal Center Tableau dashboard utilized a bar chart to show the top 10 breeds that had the highest quantities of records with intakes and outcomes at the Austin Animal Center between 2019-present. The bar chart shows the breeds that most commonly went in and out of the Austin Animal Center between 2019-present. The bar chart is shown below:
The three breeds with the longest Total bars and greatest amount of breed records of shelter animals going in and out of the Austin Animal Center between 2019-present were Domestic Shorthair cats (9,257 records), Domestic Shorthair Mix cats (4,317 records), and Pit Bull mix dogs (2,359 records). These three breeds are in great need of adoption because they existed in intakes and outcomes of the Austin Animal Center in the greatest quantity of all breeds between 2019-present.
What Kind of Animals Should Be Adopted at the Austin Animal Center?
In an ideal world, all animals would have loving homes, but right now that is not a reality. What can be done to start to make that a reality? What animals are most in need of adoption at the Austin Animal Center? My complete Austin Animal Center dashboard and my answers from my analyzed data to the questions just posed are as shown below:
- Adopt shelter animals that are younger because they have the greatest probability of having come to the shelter at a younger age of 2 years old, 1 year old, or 1 month old. The three ages I just stated cover the most common starting ages of the most amount of shelter animals at the Austin Animal Center and therefore, are great to adopt because of high quantity.
- Adopt Pit Bull Mix dogs, Labrador Retriever Mix dogs, and Domestic Shorthair Mix cats because they are the three breeds of animal with the longest stays at the Austin Animal Center. Animals with longer stays do not frequently get adopted, which is more reason to adopt them.
- Adopt Domestic Shorthair cats, Domestic Shorthair Mix cats, and Pitbull mix dogs because these three breeds have the greatest amount of records of any breed of animal at the Austin Animal Center that has been taken in and had an outcome between 2019-present. These three breeds existed in the largest magnitudes of Austin Animal Center data of intakes and outcomes between 2019-present and because of high quantity are in need of adoption.
However, setting aside all of my Austin Animal Center recommendations and analysis, I believe adoption of any animal is a special and valuable experience that will grow your life every day in amazing ways. Whatever kind of animal you choose to adopt is the right choice. All animals deserve loving families and forever homes. There are thousands upon thousands of shelter animals waiting to be given their new life. If now is the time for a shelter animal to change your life, follow Maxine’s instructions:
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