Meet Colonel, a 4-year-old male German shepherd dog who is mellow, low-key, gentle and cuddly — and currently available for foster or adoption. 

That was how a recent Black Dog Trivia night started, after the host asked for everyone’s attention for a special announcement. 

Black Dog Trivia founder Daniel Schneider is teaming up with the Santa Barbara County Animal Shelter at 5473 Overpass Road in Goleta, and hopes to use his platform to get more dogs out of kennels and into homes. 

At trivia nights, hosts highlight a different “pup of the week” from the Santa Barbara County Animal Shelter. 

So far, Schneider and county shelter staff estimate three dogs have been adopted due to the trivia partnership that began in January 2024.

“Even if it is just one dog for the entire year, that is one more dog that has a home and so that is kind of one of the things that is so important to me,” he said.

Schneider usually brings his own black Labrador, Louie, to the trivia nights he hosts. 

And as the trivia group grew, Schneider hired other hosts but they did not have dogs. He says people would come up to him to tell him he needed to have a dog at Black Dog Trivia, to live up to the name. 

“I realized that if there’s so many dogs that are in need of homes, what we could do is spotlight a different dog each week so that way Black Dog Trivia never loses that dog component,” he said.

And at the time of this interview, Schneider got an email from someone who was at the mid-November trivia night who hoped to adopt Colonel.

Schneider was ecstatic and bounced up the ramp leading into the shelter’s main office to share the news with shelter staff. 

County shelter supervisor Dustin Fujiwaka is grateful to Schneider’s initiative and for the visibility it brings to the adoptable dogs.

“Most staff members within animal services are already kind of wearing multiple hats, and so when there is an opportunity where another organization wants to help us out, it’s amazing,” he said.

He says the partnership is able to reach audiences the shelter might not on its own. 

“Black Dog Trivia is in different spots and they have a pretty diverse audience locally, and it really means a lot that our dogs can be seen,” he said. 

The dogs highlighted each week are usually black dogs, to stick with the theme and because of a notion called Black Dog Syndrome, according to county shelter volunteer Jillian Turner. 

She says black dogs are less likely to get adopted out of a shelter environment versus any other color of dog. 

The partnership with the county shelter began after Turner, a volunteer with the shelter for two years, was at one of Black Dog Trivia’s dog-themed trivia nights.

She pitched the idea to Schneider to actually bring adoptable dogs to the dog-themed  trivia nights, which they now do quarterly. 

And as the holiday season kicks off, Turner says there is an even greater need for the shelter dogs to get out.

The shelter currently has a day foster program, which Turner says is popular with the nearby college students who will take dogs out for a day or even overnight. 

“When the students go back home for the holidays and they bring the dogs back, we tend to have more dogs in kennels,” she said.

She urges local residents to take out a shelter dog during the holiday season as a foster or even just for the day. But even for those who cannot take a dog out, volunteer opportunities across the county shelters are available. 

Black Dog Trivia and the county shelter are scheduled to have a dog-themed trivia event where they will bring out adoptable dogs in holiday sweaters for people to meet on Dec. 17 at Validation Annex at 2840 De La Vina St.