Muttville Senior Dog Rescue
A San Francisco rescue founded in 2007 dedicated exclusively to senior dogs — placing thousands of older animals into homes that would otherwise have spent their last years in shelter kennels.
Muttville Senior Dog Rescue is one of the few American animal welfare organizations focused exclusively on senior dogs. It was founded in 2007 by Sherri Franklin, a longtime San Francisco animal advocate who noticed that older dogs were routinely euthanized in municipal shelters not because they were sick or aggressive, but simply because they were old. Muttville's mission, since the beginning, has been to make that euthanasia unnecessary.
The shelter operates out of a single Mission District location on Alabama Street, with a small in-house veterinary clinic and a foster network that handles a significant share of the rescue's animals.
How they work
Muttville defines "senior" as roughly seven years and older — though for some smaller breeds the threshold is closer to ten, and for some giants the threshold is closer to five. The dogs come in primarily from municipal shelter transfers, with owner surrenders and a smaller number of street rescues making up the remainder.
The adoption process is unhurried in a way that reflects the population. Most senior dogs need a thoughtful match — they often have medical needs, behavioral idiosyncrasies, or simple preferences (about other pets, about children, about the kind of household they're comfortable in) that take time to assess. The organization's adoption counselors are usually willing to spend an hour or more talking through fit.
Adoption fees are listed on the website. Fees include any necessary medical work, dental care (which is significant for many seniors), age-appropriate vaccinations, and microchipping.
Muttville is no-kill in the strictest sense. Animals with terminal diagnoses are given comfortable hospice care in foster homes through the organization's Fospice (foster + hospice) program.
Beyond standard adoptions, the organization runs:
- Fospice — for dogs with terminal conditions, foster homes provide a comfortable home for whatever time the dog has left. Many fospice dogs live months or years past their initial prognosis.
- Seniors for Seniors — discounted adoptions for adopters over 62, recognizing that older adopters often prefer (and provide good homes for) older dogs.
- Cuddle Club — a weekly program where volunteers can come to the shelter to spend an hour with the dogs in a low-stress environment. Many adoptions happen this way.
- Foster networks specifically trained for senior-dog care.
Why this matters
Senior dogs are, by a wide margin, the hardest population to place from American municipal shelters. National statistics show that dogs over seven have less than half the adoption rate of younger dogs, and dogs over ten have less than a quarter. In most cities, an older dog who enters animal control without an owner identification is at very high risk of euthanasia within days.
Muttville exists specifically to interrupt that pipeline. The organization pulls senior dogs from West Coast municipal shelters before they reach the euthanasia threshold, stabilizes them medically, and places them into adoption homes — including a substantial population of homes where the dog will live out their remaining months or years.
The shelter places roughly 1,000 senior dogs per year, a high number given how narrow the population is. Many of those dogs are placed into Bay Area homes; others go to adopters from across the western United States and occasionally further.
You can support them in the standard ways:
- Adopt from the Mission District location.
- Foster — particularly fospice fostering, which the organization is always recruiting for.
- Volunteer — Cuddle Club volunteers, dog walking, event support.
- Donate — Muttville publishes detailed financials and has consistently strong charity ratings.
A note on the senior-dog question
A common reservation among potential adopters is that adopting a senior dog means signing up for a short and grief-heavy relationship. The reservation is honest and worth taking seriously.
The counter-argument that Muttville and similar organizations make is more interesting than it sounds: senior dogs, in most cases, are already settled into who they are. The training is usually done. The temperament is usually clear. The relationship arrives almost fully formed. The years that follow may be fewer than with a puppy, but they are often less effortful — and the gratitude with which a senior dog accepts a quiet retirement is, in our experience, one of the more moving things in the dog-adoption universe.
Many Muttville adopters describe the experience as a particular kind of privilege. Some adopt senior dogs back to back. The category of adopter who has done this once and never gone back to adopting younger animals is larger than you would guess.
Field & Era at Muttville
A meaningful share of Companion Edition orders we ship are memorial prints for senior dogs who lived their last years with their adopters — and a notable subset of those are Muttville adoptions. The Alabama Street coordinates carry, for those customers, a particular weight: the address of the place that gave the dog the last good chapter.
If you adopted from Muttville and want the address set on archival paper, see the Companion Edition. 10% of every Companion order supports a rescue partner.
Last verified May 29, 2026. Facts about hours, intake policies, and adoption fees can change. Confirm with Muttville Senior Dog Rescue directly before visiting.