A BYU student is using puppy renting as a new tactic for animal adoption. This business not only helps to find homes for the dogs, but also offers stress relief for students as well.
Jenna Miller’s furry friends are inherited from families who can’t take care of them and need a home. She instituted puppy renting as an opportunity to help socialize the pups and to let customers spend some quality time with the small dogs for a small fee.
Some worry about where these puppies are housed, but Miller says she has a stable home set up in Orem.
Adoption is the goal of her business and this program is finding permanent homes for all her puppies. Some rent puppies for the purpose of adoption but others are just curious to see if that’s an investment they want to make.
Miller says the idea of puppy renting came to her when she heard about Yale’s dog-lending program. The purpose of this dog therapy helps with the stress of student life.
Miller explains how this program helps find owners, “Some people rent puppies because they’re interested in adopting them and then they can try it out, see if they like their personality, then it also creates pet owners. Some people aren’t really interested in owning a dog and then they rent the puppy for a couple of hours and it helps them see how much they love it, then you’ve got a dog owner who otherwise wouldn’t have been.”
Customers text or call the puppy hot-line; then an employee visits their home to be sure it’s a safe environment for the pup. Customers sign a liability waiver on how to treat the puppy and when the rental time is up the employee returns for pick up.
With upcoming finals in the near future, some students are finding puppy company to help with the strain of studies.
If you are considering watching a pooch, heed puppy renter Elise Mcallister’s warning about the dirty work involved: “Be ready for some accidents to clean up, there were two of them for ours.”
