AUSTIN (KXAN) – Dressed in overalls, rubber boots and a good amount of mud, Cameron Shoppach sets up his iPhone and presses record.
“Hi,” he says to the screen, reaching for a dog walking by in the yard. “Today on ‘Does It Dangle,’ we have Timothy.”
Timothy, a brown-and-white mixed-breed dog with a floppy tongue and a wagging tail, wanders over – only to be scooped up and “dangled” in the air by Shoppach.
“You guys want this one. This one is good,” he says, giving Timothy a hug before setting the dog back down.
The post got dozens of shares and thousands of likes on Shoppach’s Instagram account – username: @DoesItDangle. It’s one of a series of similar videos on his page, where he lifts up large dogs, small pups, cats and kittens and then scores their “dangling” ability.
As the assistant manager of the behavior team at Austin Pets Alive!, Shoppach works with defensive or fearful animals on behavior modification to try and get them to a place where they can be more easily adopted. Meanwhile, posting the dogs on his popular, personal account often garners the exposure they need to find a permanent home.
“It’s a lot of just showing off dogs that people are looking over,” he said.
The now-famous “dangle” began as a joke.
“There’s a temperament test in cats. It’s debunked — it’s an old wives tale thing — but there is a temperament test in cats where you can pick them up and if they sit there and dangle, then they have good temperament. I jokingly did that with pit bulls and big beefy things that people don’t necessarily see or want to adopt as much,” he laughed. “But I picked one up one day, and it kind of dangled there. And someone’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, if you make a TikTok on this, they’ll go viral.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, sure, whatever,’ and so I made a couple on Instagram — and ended up with 50,000 followers in two months. It was like, ‘Oh, this is a thing.’”
Despite its light-hearted origin, Shoppach said there is often a lot of unseen work leading up to the moment a dog or cat’s feet lift off the ground.
“By the time that you see the clip that’s 20 seconds long, or whatever, I’ve sometimes spent months with this dog building that relationship,” Shoppach said, emphasizing how little time he spends crafting the actual posts and how much time he spends with the animals.
The work has paid off: he estimates the account has raised tens of thousands of dollars and helped place dozens of dogs in permanent homes. While many content creators shun term “influencer,” he said he likes it. His goal is to get people to visit their local shelter to adopt, foster or volunteer.
‘Changed my life’
Kate Duhon remembers the exact post that prompted her to sign up to volunteer at the Austin Animal Center.
“It was a dog wearing a cone in one of the lobby kennels just asking for help, and it was the moment where I said, ‘I’ve got to do something.’ That’s when I started giving my time. But then I met him!” she laughs, looking down at the 95-pound rescue dog sitting at her feet named Rick Ross.
He’s better known by his username @RickRosstheBossDawg to the nearly 30,000 followers on the Instagram account, run by Duhon. She shares videos of what it’s like volunteering at Austin’s only open-intake shelter – and of course, fun updates of Rick enjoying his new life with his forever family.
Duhon and Shoppach are just two of a network of volunteers and staff in the Austin area, posting about rescue animals and working to get them adopted. Some work in animal welfare full-time; others – like Duhon – are doing this on the side.
As a mom of three with a full-time job and a house full of dogs, Duhon insists she’s no expert at social media.
“I just post every day, hoping for some positivity,” she said. “Every dog does have a story, and it’s really important to highlight that story, because the shelter can be so overwhelming walking through.”
Rick’s story has landed him in a place of notoriety: his face is printed on stickers on the neighborhood kids’ water bottles, his posts get dozens of likes and comments. The attention has allowed Duhon to help highlight dogs that are most-often overlooked: larger dogs, dogs with black coats, and Bully breeds.
Duhon said she feels lucky to be able to stay connected to some of the families who adopt these animals through social media.
“He’s changed my life in a really positive way,” she said.
‘Worth it’
Not all of the content from these accounts is light-hearted.
One of Duhon’s most viral posts featured a dog named Hazelnut, visibly overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the shelter. The video showed Duhon simply sitting with the pup and comforting her. It has more than 35,000 likes.
Shoppach said some of his best-performing videos feature the multi-step process of building trust with a difficult case – especially when an animal eventually comes around. He’s also open about how some of his heart-breaking tributes about animals facing euthanasia cause his follower-count to drop.
“This job is really hard,” Shoppach said, emotion filling his voice. “Yeah… this job is really hard. So, to know that you can make more of an impact than just one guy at a shelter helping a handful of dogs – but instead have an impact on hundreds of thousands of people and get them motivated to do something – makes all of this extra work worth it.”
He said he ultimately wants to show the side of animal welfare he often experiences: a happy dog leaping into his arms, with its tongue out and its tail wagging – hopeful its story has a happy ending.
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