At 82, Rudy Scaglione took his place beside Nikki, a senior shelter dog waiting to be noticed. Around them, four more residents and four more older dogs formed the rest of an unusual Tampa adoption portrait: gray-haired people lending their presence to gray-muzzled animals in need of homes.
The photo shoot brought together Stronger Shot Adoption Photos, the Humane Society of Tampa Bay and Brookdale Bayshore Senior Living. Timed to celebrate National Senior Pet Day on August 3, the campaign paired five Brookdale residents with five senior dogs and aimed the resulting photographs at prospective adopters browsing online.
That online introduction matters because many people begin their search for a pet on a shelter website or another digital platform. For Nikki and the other dogs, the immediate goal was not to tell their entire stories in one image. It was to earn a pause, a closer look and, perhaps, a visit to the shelter.
“If we can catch someone’s attention, late at night they see a photo that they are not used to seeing, then we are doing our job,” photographer Adam Goldberg said.
The organizations had tried the idea before. Their collaboration the previous year was credited with a handful of adoptions, though no exact number or method of measuring the campaign’s effect was provided. Whether Nikki or any of the four other dogs from the latest shoot eventually found homes was not reported.
What a photograph can and cannot do
The strategy reflects a real challenge in shelter adoption: a dog must first become visible before an adopter can ask whether that animal fits their life. National data from Shelter Animals Count found that senior-dog adoptions declined by 2% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier. That national trend does not establish what happened to these five Tampa dogs, but it helps explain the campaign’s focus.
Research also suggests that photographs deserve attention without being treated as a guarantee. In a virtual experiment involving 680 participants, researchers tested shelter-dog photographs with outdoor, indoor, kennel and plain-colored backgrounds. The background itself did not significantly affect profile clicks or perceived sociability. Differences between the individual dogs had more influence on engagement.
That finding adds a useful caution to the Tampa campaign: distinctive photography may help a dog enter someone’s field of vision, but no particular backdrop can promise an adoption. The fuller profile still matters. Best Friends Animal Society recommends describing what shelter or foster caregivers have actually observed rather than making promises about a pet’s future behavior.
For adopters, that means looking beyond a compelling portrait and asking the shelter for the dog’s known history, medical information, behavior observations and compatibility with other pets or children. It is also worth discussing the dog’s expected activity and care needs, then considering whether those needs fit the household’s time and budget. Any health concerns should be reviewed with a veterinarian rather than judged from age or appearance alone.
Careful matching matters at every age. A study of nearly 24,000 shelter adoption records found that behavior concerns and incompatibility with existing pets were the most common reasons dogs were returned. Senior dogs were more likely than puppies to be returned in that single-shelter study, although adult dogs had the highest return risk. The findings support asking detailed questions before adoption instead of assuming that an older dog will automatically be easy or difficult.
Scaglione brought personal experience to his portrait with Nikki: he has an older dog named Calvin. He described senior dogs as smart, generally well-trained and shaped by experience. His hope for the campaign was simple: “I hope it just gives someone the incentive to move forward and do it, instead of just thinking about it.”
The photographs could not decide what came next for Nikki or the other four dogs. They could only hold the door open long enough for someone to stop scrolling and consider stepping through. Have you ever adopted a dog with a story like this? Share it in the comments.
By Jake Patterson — Freelance feature writer and former animal-shelter volunteer focused on rescue, adoption, and second-chance dog stories.
