Animals

The Animals page is your shelter's roster — every animal in your care. From here you find animals, open a profile to see everything about one, take quick actions like checking an animal out for a walk, and bring new arrivals into the system.

Who can use this page: everyone can view animals. Creating, editing, transferring, and offboarding are staff and administrator actions.

Two labels on every animal: status and availability

Each animal shows two badges, and they mean different things:

• Status is where the animal is in its overall journey through the shelter.
• Availability (the second badge) is whether the animal can do an activity right now.

They're independent — an animal can be Active (status) but on a Medical hold (availability) at the same time.

Status — the animal's lifecycle

Status	Meaning
Active	In your care and part of the daily roster.
On hold	In care but set aside (for example pending a decision).
Foster	Living in a foster home.
Adopted / Transferred / Returned to owner / Released	A final outcome — the animal has left your care.
Euthanized / Passed away / Lost	A final outcome recording that the animal is no longer in care.

Animals with a final outcome are offboarded — they drop off the active roster but their record is kept for history and reporting.

Availability — can it do an activity now?

Availability	Meaning
Available	Free to be checked out for an activity.
In activity	Currently checked out / in an activity.
At vet	Away receiving veterinary care.
Quarantine / Medical hold / Behavior hold	Held back from activities for health or safety reasons (setting these requires the holds permission).
Restricted / Unavailable	Not available for activities.
Unassigned location	Has no location set yet, so it can't be checked out.

Find an animal

Use the search box to look up a name, species, or identifier, and the filters to narrow by species, status, intake type, or availability. Click any column heading to sort. The count ("Showing 14 animals") reflects whatever filters are applied.

The summary cards above the roster double as one-click filters: Total animals shows everything, and Active roster, In foster, On hold, and Offboarded show the animals in each status — those four add up to the total, so it's always clear where every animal is (Offboarded filters when you have offboarding access). Checked out is a little different: it shows animals currently out with someone, whatever their status. The card driving the current filter is outlined — click another card, or change the Status filter, to switch views. Hover over any card (or focus it with the keyboard) for a short definition of exactly what it counts.

Row actions (the icons on the right)

Each row has quick-action icons. What you see depends on your role:

• Check out / check in — start or end a checkout. Checking an animal out records that it's with a person or at a location (and flips availability to In activity); checking it in closes that record.
• QR code / card — show the animal's QR code and print its shelter card (also called a habitat or kennel card). See Print a shelter card.
• Transfer — move the animal. See Moving animals.
• Offboard (archive icon) — record a final outcome (adoption, transfer, euthanasia, etc.). Euthanasia asks for confirmation. Offboarding never deletes the record — it moves the animal off the active roster.

Intake a new animal

"Intake" means adding an animal to the shelter for the first time.

1. Click New intake in the top-right.
2. Enter the basics — at minimum a name, a species, and an intake type (how the animal came to you, e.g. stray or owner surrender).
3. Choose a location so the animal has somewhere to live and can be checked out.
4. Save. The animal joins the roster and is automatically assigned a unique identifier (its ZSS ID).

Bringing in a whole list at once? Use Imports instead of adding them one by one.

Bulk editing

Tick the checkboxes on several rows to act on them together — for example setting the handling tier for a group of animals at once. Bulk actions save time when the same change applies to many animals, and each change is recorded individually in the audit log.

The handling tier says who may handle an animal:

• Volunteer-friendly — any volunteer.
• Experienced only — experienced handlers; new volunteers are kept away.
• Staff only — staff handling required.

Print a shelter card

A shelter card is the printable card you hang on a kennel or habitat. Open an animal's QR / card action to view its QR code and print the card. The QR code lets staff and volunteers pull up that animal on the mobile app by scanning — handy for confirming you're working with the right animal at the kennel.

The card shows the animal's Public tags only — Internal tags (say, a staff-only note) still appear on the animal's profile in the app, but stay off the printed card. Tags synced from ShelterLuv follow their ShelterLuv Publish setting; for tags you create yourself, use the Public checkbox when editing the tag in Lookups → Care tags.

Open an animal's profile

Click a row to open the full profile. It's organized into tabs:

• Overview — demographics, identifiers, tags, weight, handling tier, status and availability, location, and intake/outcome details.
• History — a timeline of every status and availability change, with who changed it, when, and why.
• Surveys — the activity surveys recorded for this animal.
• Goals — this animal's daily activity goals, including any per-animal overrides to the species defaults (see Activity goals).

Need to change something? Click Edit in the profile header to open the same edit form as the pencil icon on the animal's roster row — name, demographics, location, tags, identifiers, and more. Editing requires the animal-update permission (staff and administrators by default).

Start an activity from a profile

Staff, administrators, and volunteers can start an individual activity (a walk, enrichment, a play-area session, an office day) straight from an animal's profile — no phone required. Open the profile and click Start activity, pick the activity type, and go. Notes are captured when you end the activity, so everything you observed goes in one place. The button is only available while the animal's availability is Available; an animal already in an activity, on hold, or checked out can't start another.

The activity behaves exactly like one started from the mobile app: the animal is checked out and marked In activity, the session appears in the Dashboard's Live activities table, and when you end it you'll be asked to fill the short post-activity survey (including the first-time survey when it's your first session with that animal).

While an activity is running, the profile shows who has the animal out and since when. If you started it, the profile also shows End activity — click it, choose Completed (default) or Abandoned, and on completion you're walked straight into the post-activity survey, right there. The same End action is on your row in Dashboard → Live activities. Only the person who started an activity can end it normally; administrators ending someone else's session use Override end (which cancels the surveys) — overrides are for stuck sessions, not routine stops.

Volunteers can use this web flow too, from a trusted (approved) browser — the mobile app remains the at-kennel path with its QR checks. New or unapproved browsers get restricted access and can't start activities until the device is approved.

Moving animals

Use Transfer to move an animal. There are three kinds of move, and they mean different things:

• Change location — move the animal to a different location within your shelter (a different kennel, room, or site). Day-to-day location changes.
• Foster placement — send the animal to live with a foster. Its status becomes Foster; it stays your animal. You pick the foster, a placement reason (for example Underage, Medical, or Break — the list is managed in Lookups), and optionally an expected return date and notes. The reason and expected return show on the animal's profile while it's in foster, and they stay on the transfer history after it comes back.
• Transfer to another organization — hand the animal off to a different shelter. This is a final outcome for your shelter.

Locations come from your shelter's location tree — see Organization settings.

Fields explained

Field	What it means
Summary cards	The cards above the roster double as filters: Total animals shows everything, and Active roster, In foster, On hold, and Offboarded show the animals in each status (the four status cards add up to the total; Offboarded filters when you have offboarding access). Checked out is different — it shows animals currently out with someone, whatever their status. The card driving the current filter is outlined; click another card or change the Status filter to switch. Point at a card (or focus it with the keyboard) for a short definition of exactly what it counts.
Status	Where the animal is in its journey — for example available, on hold, fostered, or adopted.
Handling tier	Who may handle this animal: volunteer-friendly, experienced-only, or staff-only.
Activity state	Whether the animal is free, in an activity, or temporarily held from activities.
Foster placement	When you transfer an animal to foster you pick the foster, a placement reason (for example Underage, Medical, or Break — required), and optionally an expected return date and notes. The reason and expected return show on the animal's profile while it's in foster and stay on the transfer history after it returns. The reason list is managed in Settings → Lookups → Placement reasons.
Start activity	Staff and admins can start an individual activity (a walk, enrichment, an office day) straight from the animal's profile — pick the activity type and go. Notes are captured when you end the activity, not when you start it. The button is available only while the animal is available for activity. When you end the activity from the Dashboard you'll be asked to fill the short post-activity survey, exactly like the mobile flow. Volunteers start activities from the mobile app.