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How to Handle a PR Crisis

If anything, I hope the Ellen fiasco taught all of us in the rescue industry the importance of having a crisis PR plan. Due to a barrage of negative publicity, Mutts and Moms was forced to keep a low profile, even going so far as to pull down their Petfinder page, no doubt leaving animal lives in limbo. Sadly, it may take years for Mutts and Moms to restore their reputation.

But this doesn’t have to happen to your group. No matter how small your group is, it pays to have a crisis plan in place.

Don’t think your group will ever feel the heat of the national media spotlight? As the following examples show, the local media spotlight can be just as dangerous:

• In Arizona, a woman gave up her golden retrievers to a regional rescue group. When she changed her mind and requested they be returned, the group’s president refused. The woman turned to the local media, blaming her decision on a recent miscarriage. A local TV affiliate then showed up, woman in tow, to the door of the home of the woman fostering the dogs, cameras rolling.
  
  
• In a small North Carolina town, a family dog escaped its home and was found by a local rescue group. The group adopted the dog to another family. When the dog’s former owners saw the dog with the new owners, they demanded its return. After the group rebuffed their request, the family turned to the local paper, leading to inflammatory postings on a local internet message board and death threats for the group. Fearing for thiers safety, the group then took the dog from its new owners and returned it to the family.

• A Texas rescue group denied a dog to a prospective family when they learn that one of the members could not interact with the dog at the group’s shelter due to being bedridden from a stroke. Not surprisingly, the local media picked up the story, leading local residents to accuse the group of discriminating against the disabled.

There are countless other stories of rescue groups receiving negative press attention in local media outlets. In my experience, it seems that every couple of months, there’s either a news report or letter to the editor from a prospective adopter complaining about being denied a pet from a particular local group. Now, thanks to many newspapers offering online message boards and the ability to anonymously post comments, a reader can stumble across thousands of angry messages that seem to confirm such an account.