To The Rescue! How to Run Your Shelter Efficiently

Hello, and welcome to this quick guide on how to run your shelter !

Those are just some tips I acquired playing the demo and the start of the game, but I hope they can help people to enjoy the game to it’s fullest !
Be warned tho that this guide cointains spoilers!!

Now let’s dive right into it with the tips I have for general gameplay ! I’ll also have some tips for the skill tree down below in another section

First, don’t worry too much about the Sunny paws shelter, it’s a tutorial to get you used to the game, you don’t have to make sure that every dog is perfectly cared for, just take this time to get used to the controls and the mechanics

After two days, you’ll get into the real game, with your very own shelter ! You start out with 5 dogs, they always have the same traits and start with the bars full so you don’t have to worry about food and water yet, what I advise you to do first when you get your shelter is to go on your pc.

You’ll have to buy kennels firstly, so go in build mode and buy 10, so you have extra room ready for new pups! Place them near to the doors at first, since you don’t move very fast you’ll gain a bit of time to give food and water in early game, every second counts !

Second, go to riberta’s pet emporium and buy :

1. one more pocket, it may seem like a big investment since it’s 250 coins but it’s really worth it and will speed you up.
2. buy 5 of each food, to settle you nicely, it doesn’t cost much so it’s okay and you won’t fret too much about food right away
3. buy 3 of each vaccines, and that is the most important tip I have :

(if you can)
This is what really got me to boost my adoptions, it may seem counter-intuitive since vaccines cost a lot of money but believe me it’s what will get you on top in a short time.

It’s important to know that when you fully vaccinate a dog, they gain 1 star, which may not seem much, but if you think about the adoption process and do some quick maths, you’ll realise that if every dog you present to a potential adopter as 1 more star, it’s 5 more stars in the end which is like a 6th dog presented and believe me it makes the whole difference.

Combined with the persuasion and emphasize traits in the skill tree ( that I’ll talk about in the other section ), I had an adoption rate close to 100%, even with adopters that didn’t have a lot of willingness.
Though I would advise you to be careful with how you use the persuasion, it’s bugged atm so I wouldn’t recommend to take it for the moment, plus it cost a bit of your reputation, and I saw on barkbook that an adopter I persuaded was regretting their decision so I advise you a bit of caution using it.
But most of the time, with only vaccinated dogs I can get to an adoption easily without needing persuasion or emphasize traits.

If you’re wondering about the financial cost of vaccinating all your dogs, I’d say to not worry too much.
Firstly, when you fully vaccinate dogs for the first times, you’ll quickly get a lot of milestones related to vaccination that will give you A LOT of coins.
Secondly, as I said before, vaccinating your dogs lead to more adoptions, more adoptions lead to more money earned. Plus, though I have to verify my claims, I believe that fully vaccinated dogs that get adopted earn you more money than non-vaccinated dogs, but I’m not too sure about this for the moment though I strongly believe it seems like it. EDIT : It seems like vaccinated dogs are adopted for 250 coins, whilst non vaccinated dogs are bought for 100 coins. cost of vaccination is 170, so there’s a 20 coin deficit but I strongly believe it is covered by the much higher rate of adoption, donations and all but will have to see how it goes in late game. For the moment I didn’t have any monetary issue, quite the opposite actually
Thirdly, since you have more adoptions, you’ll have a better reputation, and a bette reputation leads to even more adoptions and more donations : so all in all, more money.
For the moment, I’ve had no problems financially and even the contrary, I had a really stable income with this tip. I’ll admit I created a guide mostly for this, because I believe it’s a really strong way to have a stable kennel.

• Don’t hesitate to buy Riberta’s mystery boxes, I believe they are always worth it, either earning you 500 coins ( so 400 if you substract the cost of the box ) or one time I had 3 vaccines of each time in one box, so it can help you with the big tip about vaccinated dogs.
• When you’re running around either bathing dogs or choosing dogs for adoptions, try to always have the pooper scooper in hand, this way when you get past the kennels you can go for a quick scoop, gaining more time, and time is money !
• When vaccinating your dogs, try to have your hands free so you can take 3 vaccines at once, and vaccinate quickly your dogs , once again time management is essential, you wan’t to gain every little second you can
• This I’ll detail more in the other section, but try to build bigger kennel faster, since you can have adoptions quickier, sometimes you’ll settle dogs in kennel but they won’t eat and you’ll have a kennel with a specific type of food, and if you’re unlucky you won’t get a dog that likes this food before a long time. By having bigger kennels, you can have 1 for each type of food and settle dogs here, but if they get adopted right away and don’t eat it’s alright because it’s more room for dogs of the same type if they have to come, I hope it makes sense but anyway the tip would be : 1 big kennel for each type of food
• If you have dogs to bathe but a billion other things to do, you can put a dog in the bathtub, scrub it once and then leave them here and do something else, they’ll get cleaned tho it’ll be slow but you can do other things when they are getting cleaned, like vaccinating dogs !
• Adopters wait all day for adoption, so if someone comes at 9AM but you had to take care urgently of a dog don’t worry, you have time to take care of them before going to see the adopter ! be careful of the time tho, it closes at 6PM (or 18h) so don’t risk losing adopters either
• As mentionned by Kayeka, don’t hesitate to check the dogs on the dog log, I personnally like to sort them by size, breed or just avaibility when I have specifics demands from adopters ! It makes you gain a lot of time to find which dogs would be best to show in the adoption booth

(I’ll complet this section over time, when I’ll have a bit more of gameplay)

Now here are my tips for which skills to chose first in the skill tree
For these it’s more about what I feel works best, but maybe some people will have other tips, would love to hear your thoughts!

• Firstly, I get all 3 new shoes perks in the handling, cause moving faster helps you do everything faster !
• Secondly, I go in logistics all the way to onboarding, it’s very important because with it dogs will arrive at your shelter and be basically ready to be shown, you can just vaccinate them and they are ready so you gain so much time ! Plus, starting the logistics branch, you get the emphasize a trait action that can be really helpful, but do remember that it only works on dogs that have a trait the adopter wants
  
• Thirdly, I go in the handiwork part and unlock the 2×1 and 2×2 kennels, for the advice on bigger kennels. I don’t buy basic play space yet because when I played it I found it a bit underwhelming, I think it’s better to take care of basics needs and vaccinate but to each their own, maybe I haven’t found the proper way to play with it yet !
• After this, I lvl up the public relation branch to get the persuade option and chose to have more reputation when I vaccinate dogs, obviously it goes very well with the earlier advice! But i’m not leveling it up more than that since it’s bugged atm
• With more points, I take the autoscrubber and level it up fully, level up it’s speed so I can leave dogs in the bathtub and they get cleaned very quickly !
  
• Last I get all my remaining points in logistics again, I increase donations and adoptions fees so now it’s completely worth it to vaccinate all doggos ! You can also lvl up the emphasize trait effectiveness if you find it not very useful and sometimes have trouble with adoptions