For over a decade, Adrian Budnick has taken adoption photos of the dogs at Nashville’s county animal shelter, but it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that an idea came to her.
As one of only a few people allowed to visit in-person, she could take videos of dogs, inventing humorous nicknames and capturing their individual personalities, for an audience of potential adopters.
First came her TikToks playing the persona of Anita Walker, a fast-talking, cowboy boot-wearing purveyor of certified pre-owned pets. Then she struck gold with the “What’s this then?” series — short videos featuring goofy dog names that drew in viewers and boosted adoptions.
Photo: AP
VIRAL VIDEOS
“It was kind of just on a whim,” Budnick said. “We had this — I’m assuming it was like a poodle-doodle situation, and he was really big and lanky.”
People often assume the shelter doesn’t have fluffy dogs, so Budnick adopted what she calls her “Karen” voice — slightly bored and complaining — when she looked into the camera to say: “The shelter only has pit bulls.”
Photo: AP
“And then I held up this giant curly dog with legs and the tongue hanging out. And I was like, ‘What’s this then?’”
She called it a “Himalayan fur goblin.”
The video “exploded over night,” Budnick said. So much so that she went back the next day to make another one “because I’m like, I can’t let this go.”
Since then she has promoted the adoption of such imaginative dog breeds as the “Teacup werewolf” and the “Speckled freckled cuddle calf.” Then there’s the “French baguette long lady” and the “Creamsicle push-up pup.”
The shelter does get its share of pit bull mixes. A December video featuring several of them in festive costumes with Budnick singing “I Want a Pitt-o-potomous for Christmas” has been viewed more than 5 million times.
ADOPTIONS GET A BOOST
While it is gratifying to gain visibility, Budnick said, the real payoff is in the adoptions. Data provided by the shelter shows dog adoptions increased by just over 25 percent between 2021 and last year.
“We’ll get calls from all over. And it’s not just local here to Tennessee even,” said Metro Animal Care and Control Director Ashley Harrington. “We’ve had an adopter from Canada. We’ve had ones from states all over.”
She said people often call asking about a specific, made-up dog breed from one of the videos.
“It’s been pretty great, and it’s been fun for our staff.”
The popularity of Budnick’s videos have also led to donations of both money and supplies. Letters to the shelter referencing her videos are taped to a wall in the volunteer room.
Still, like many other shelters in the South, it’s overcrowded.
Budnick has one thing to say about that situation: “Spay and neuter, spay and neuter, spay and neuter.”
FOR THE LOVE OF DOGS
Budnick started taking photos as a kid. While on camping trips, she’d take nature pictures with a 35 mm Canon AE-1. In high school she took photography classes and learned to make her own prints in a darkroom. But eventually she stopped taking pictures.
That changed when she adopted a dog.
“When I got Ruby, my 13-year-old, 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 after that she began as a volunteer photographer at the shelter.
“So really, my dogs got me back into it.”
With her photos and videos, Budnick fights against the stigma that the shelter is a sad place with dogs no one would want. In many of the videos, she holds even the large dogs in her arms and gets her face licked.
“You see them running around in the videos when they’re in playgroup, and you see them cuddling, and you see their goofy smiles when I’m holding them, and it just really showcases them,” she said.
Budnick’s success has been noticed. She loves it when other shelters copy her ideas, or even lip sync over her videos while showing their own dogs, but she’s not interested in taking on more work. She has a regular job in addition to volunteering for the shelter between 7-10 hours each week, but she doesn’t mind the long hours.
“I’m just having fun,” she said. “I absolutely love dogs. I think they’re the best thing on earth.”
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
RSS