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Datasets:
quocnam1012
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shelter-dogs

Tasks:
Text Classification
Sentence Similarity
Modalities:
Text
Formats:
parquet
Languages:
English
Size:
10K - 100K
Tags:
dogs
adoption
shelter
petfinder
animals
pets
Libraries:
Datasets
pandas
Polars
License:
Dataset card Data Studio Files
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metadata 
license: mit
task_categories:
  - text-classification
  - sentence-similarity
language:
  - en
tags:
  - dogs
  - adoption
  - shelter
  - petfinder
  - animals
  - pets
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K
pretty_name: US Shelter Dogs (PetFinder Snapshot)

🐾 US Shelter Dogs — PetFinder Adoption Dataset

A cleaned and enriched dataset of 49,036 real adoptable dogs from US shelters and rescues, originally collected from the PetFinder API on September 20, 2019.

Dataset Description

Each row represents a single adoptable dog with:

  • Rich text descriptions written by shelters/rescues (median 708 characters)
  • Breed information (216 unique breeds, primary + secondary + mixed flag)
  • Demographics: age class, sex, size, coat type
  • Compatibility flags: good with children, dogs, cats
  • Training/needs: house trained, special needs, vaccination status
  • Location: city and state
  • PetFinder URL: direct link to the dog's original listing

match_text Column

A pre-built combined text field that merges the dog's structured metadata (name, breed, age, size, compatibility, training status) with their free-text description. Designed for semantic similarity matching with sentence-transformers.

Source

Originally collected by Amber Thomas for The Pudding's essay "Finding Forever Homes" (October 2019). Raw data from the-pudding/data.

Data was collected via PetFinder's V2 API (get-animals) for all US states + DC. Descriptions were obtained via the V1 API. This dataset represents a single-day snapshot of all adoptable dogs on PetFinder.

Cleaning Applied

  1. Removed dogs without descriptions (8,705 rows) and very short descriptions < 30 chars (439 rows)
  2. Dropped administrative columns (declawed, stateQ, accessed, type.x, type.y, org_id, contact_zip, contact_country, status, species)
  3. Created match_text combining structured metadata + description for embedding
  4. Standardized boolean and compatibility columns

Column Reference

Column Type Description
id int Unique PetFinder ID
url string PetFinder listing URL
name string Dog's name
breed_primary string Primary breed (216 unique)
breed_secondary string Secondary breed (if mixed)
breed_mixed bool Whether mixed breed
age string Baby, Young, Adult, Senior
sex string Male, Female, Unknown
size string Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large
coat string Short, Medium, Long, Wire, Curly, Hairless
env_children string yes / no / unknown
env_dogs string yes / no / unknown
env_cats string yes / no / unknown
house_trained bool House trained status
special_needs bool Has special needs
description string Full shelter-written description
match_text string Combined metadata + description for embedding
contact_city string Shelter city
contact_state string Shelter state

Usage

Used by the Shelter Dog Personality Matcher Gradio Space — a quiz-based app that matches users to adoptable dogs using sentence-transformer semantic similarity.

Statistics

  • 49,036 dogs with descriptions
  • 216 unique primary breeds
  • Age: Adult (57%), Young (33%), Baby (19%), Senior (9%)
  • Size: Medium (61%), Large (32%), Small (24%), Extra Large (2%)
  • Top breeds: Pit Bull Terrier, Labrador Retriever, Chihuahua, Mixed Breed, Terrier
  • All 50 US states + DC represented

License

The original data was collected from the publicly available PetFinder API. Released under MIT license for research and educational purposes.