Nashville, Tennessee (AP) – For more than a decade, Adrian Budnick took photos of adoption of the Dogs of the county of Nashville…
Nashville, Tennessee (AP) – For more than a decade, Adrian Budnick took photos of adoption of the dogs of the Nashville county refuge, but it was only during the pandemic cocovid that an idea came to him.
As one of the few people authorized to visit in person, she could take dog videos, invent humorous nicknames and capture their individual personalities, for an audience of potential adopters.
The Tiktoks came for the first time by playing the character of Anita Walker, a cowboy provider cowboy for certified used pets. Then she struck gold with the “what is then?” Series – Short videos featuring clumsy dog names that have attracted viewers and stimulated adoptions.
The names of imaginative dogs have made the viral videos
“It was just on a whim,” said Budnick. “We had that – I guess it was like a poodle situation, and it was really tall and tagged.”
People often assume that the refuge has no soft dogs, so Budnick adopted what she calls her voice “Karen” – slightly bored and complaining – when she looked in the camera to say: “The shelter has only pit -bulls.”
“And then I held this giant curly dog with legs and the tongue lying around. And I said to myself:” What is it? “”
She called it a “Himalayan fur goblin”.
The video “exploded overnight,” said Budnick. So much so that she returned the next day to make another “because I am like, I can't let that go.”
Since then, she has promoted the adoption of such an imagination dog breeds Like the “tea cup wolf” and the “caline caline caline of freckles”. Then there is the “French Baguette Long Lady” and the “Push-Up with cream puppy”.
The refuge obtains its share of pit-bull mixtures. A video of December featuring several of them in festive costumes with Budnick singing “I Want a Pitt-O-Potomeous for Christmas” has been seen more than 5 million times.
Adoptions have obtained a boost
Although it is rewarding to gain visibility, said Budnick, the real gain is in adoptions. The data provided by the refuge show that dog adoptions increased by just over 25% between 2021 and 2024.
“We will receive calls everywhere. And it's not just local here in Tennessee itself,” said Ashley Harrington, director of Metro Animal Care and Control. “We had an adopter of Canada. We have had states everywhere. ”
She said people often call questions about a specific and invented breed from one of the videos. “It was rather great, and it was fun for our staff.”
The popularity of Budnick's videos has also led to donations both in money and supplies. Letters to the refuge referring to his videos are recorded on a wall in the volunteer room.
However, like many other shelters in the South, it is overload.
Budnick has one thing to say about this situation: “sterilize and neutralize, sterilize and neutral, sterilize and neutral”.
Back to photography – For the love of dogs
Budnick began to take photos as a child. During camping trips, she would take photos of nature with a 35 mm barrel AE-1. In high school, she took photography lessons and learned to do her own prints in a dark room. But finally, she stopped taking photos.
It changed when she adopted a dog.
“When I had Ruby, my 13-year-old child, she was five weeks old and I started taking pictures of her,” she said. A few months later, Budnick adopted Ruby's sister, and a few months later, she started as a volunteer photographer at the refuge. “So really, my dogs brought me back.”
With his photos and videos, Budnick fights against stigma that refuge is a sad place with dogs that no one would like. In many videos, she even holds the big dogs in her arms and gets her face licked.
“You see them running in the videos when they are in the game group, and you see them cuddling, and you see their clumsy smiles when I hold them, and that really presents them,” she said.
Budnick's success was noticed. She loves this when other shelters copy her ideas, or even the synchronization of lips on her videos while showing their own dogs, but she is not interested in doing more work. She has a regular job in addition to volunteering for the refuge between 7 and 10 hours per week, but that does not care about long hours.
“I am having fun,” she said. “I love dogs. I think it's the best thing on earth. ”
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