Do you feel like taking home a leather elf from the Himalayas or a werewolf of tea cups?
The creative turn of an American photographer in the nicknames for dogs and publications in the social networks of adoption has gone viral and has helped dozens of dogs find new houses.
For more than a decade, Adrian Budnick has taken photos of adoption of abandoned dogs in the Nashville County Animals refuge.
During the pandemic, he began to take a creative license for his marketing efforts.
Budnick invented humorous nicknames and captured individual personalities of hairy friends of four legs who need new families.
She hit the gold with “What is this then?” Series: Short videos with names of silly dogs that attracted the spectators and the driven adoptions.
“It was a bit of whim,” Budnick said.
“We had this, I guess it was like a poodle situation, and it was really great and Larirucho.”
People often assume that the shelter has no spongy dogs, so Budnick adopted what she calls her voice “Karen”, a little boring and complaining, when he looked at the camera to say: “The shelter only has Pit Bulls.”
“And then I lifted this giant curly dog with legs and my tongue hanging. And I said: ‘What is this then?'”
She called him a leather goblin from the Himalayas.
The video “exploded during the night,” said Budnick.
So much so that he returned the next day to do another: “Because I’m like, I can’t let this go.”
Since then, he has promoted the adoption of dog breeds as imaginative as the werewolf and the peculpilated clamp calf.
Then there is the Baguette Long Long French and the cream flexion puppy.
The shelter obtains its part of the Pit Bull mixtures. A December video with several of them in festive costumes with Budks singing “I Want a Pitt-O-Potomous for Christmas” has been seen more than five million times.
While it is gratifying to gain visibility, said Budnick, the real reward is in adoptions.
The data provided by the shelter show that dog adoptions increased by a little more than 25 percent between 2021 and 2024.
“We will receive calls from everywhere. And it is not just local here for Tennessee even,” said Metro Control and Control Director Ashley Harrington.
“We have had a Canada adopter. We have had those of the states everywhere.”
She said people often call to ask about a breed of specific and invented dogs of one of the videos.
“It has been quite good, and it has been fun for our staff.”
The popularity of Budnick’s videos has also brought to donations of money and supplies.
He loves when other shelters copy his ideas, or even the synchronization of lips through his videos while he shows his own dogs.
“I love dogs. I think they are the best of the earth,” he said.
