HAVE YOU LOST YOUR PET?

This Information is Provided with the Permission of

Main Line Animal Rescue

www.mlar.org

Losing your pet can be one of the most upsetting ordeals you and your pet may ever go through. It is important to remain calm and to do everything needed to find your dog or cat.

Make a call to your local police department and report your dog or cat missing. You will need to file a missing pet report with their department, then after you speak to them, ask to be connected with their Animal Control Officer. In most cases, this officer will be out in their van helping other people and they will need to call you back. If they don't return your call in a timely manner, keep calling until you are able to speak to him or her. In some townships, animal control is handled by the local SPCAs or Humane Societies. Call ALL the shelters, SPCAs and Humane Societies in your area and file a missing pet report. Remember, a person working in your area may pick up your lost pet and drive them out of the immediate vicinity, dropping them off at a shelter nearest to THEIR home. So call ALL the shelters within 50 miles.

Interview neighbors, talk to UPS drivers, mailmen, and school bus drivers who routinely travel the streets where your dog or cat was last spotted. Everyday school buses leave from a "hub." Go there and talk to the drivers before they leave in the morning. Give them several lost dog (or cat) posters to hang in their communal area. Police departments also have communal areas/locker rooms and a sympathetic officer will also hang up your signs if asked. Town watch organizations are also excellent at finding pets, call them as well as local schools and ask them to mention your missing pet over their public address systems. You will soon have hundreds of children searching for your dog or cat for the reward. Seniors are also a valuable resource of information and many of our older citizens are out and about during the day. Visit senior centers and hang signs.

Signs, posters and ads. Create signs and hang them on telephone poles. This is still THE most effective way to recover your pet. BUT you must make the signs large enough to read from a car stopped at a red light, fifteen feet away. Print off posters 11" by 17" for telephone poles. REWARD should be across the top in bold (the people who will stop and help your pet will be true animal-lovers and will rarely accept a reward if it is offered). Followed by LOST DOG (or CAT), then a photo of your pet. In smaller print describe your dog or cat, include their name and where they disappeared (the intersection, town, etc. but NOT your actual address). At the bottom, large and in BOLD, put your phone number. These signs should also be hung in convenience stores, libraries, pet food stores, and most importantly veterinarian offices, including all emergency vet hospitals in case your pet was hit by a car and was brought in by a good Samaritan. Ads in local newspapers are often inexpensive (retail ad space is more effective than just a classified ad) and if your pet has distinguished themselves as a therapy dog or has done something that has set them apart, the newspapers may be convinced to write a small article and include a photograph.

Shelters, Humane Societies and SPCAs. As difficult as it is to visit all the shelters in your area, it is THE most important step in finding your pet. Often dogs are not identified properly when they are brought into shelters. MLAR hears stories all the time of dogs or cats sitting in SPCAs while the owners were repeatedly told that their pets were not there. Male Cockapoos have been identified as female Cocker Spaniels. Corgies have been labeled as Dachshund Mixes. Any black dog brought into a shelter is a Lab Mix; all brown dogs are labeled Shepherd Mixes. And if your dog has long hair and is turned into an SPCA, the staff may shave him or her down and he/she may no longer look like the dog you lost, or the dog on your posters. GO to your local shelters and look in every kennel run, and go often. Hang your signs in their lobbies and get to know their volunteers and staff. They will be more likely to help and remember your pet.

Illegal but effective. It is illegal to stuff individual mailboxes with smaller versions of your telephone signs, but MLAR has been told that it is an extremely effective way to track your pet. Not that we would ever encourage anyone to break the law. You can place signs outside the boxes or through the handles of people's front doors. Or you can contact www.expresscopy.com and they will help you create postcards with a photograph and information on your pet and mail them out to 100 homes in your area for about $40. We suggest mailing out a minimum of 500 cards for approximately $200. Express Copy can provide the addresses of all the surrounding homes if you can tell them where your pet was last spotted. These postcards are mailed out immediately and postage is covered in the price of the cards.

Never give up. Cats have turned up a year later. Dogs have been known to live in wooded areas for months before being rescued and dropped off at the local Humane Society or SPCA. Studies have proven that most lost cats stay within 500 feet of the place from which they were lost. Dogs hide in open garages and sheds and are attracted to construction sites where the workers, thinking the dog belong to the neighbors, feed them. Also, tree trimmers, gardeners, construction workers and road crews have, from time to time, inadvertently taken pets they thought were ownerless. If your pet disappears, try to remember if there was any work done outside of your home on that day and contact those companies.

Get your pet micro-chipped so if your dog or cat does run away and is picked up by animal control or is taken to your local shelter, they can scan your pet and call you. Micro-chipping is inexpensive and done without anesthesia. A small, rice-sized, micro-chip is inserted between your pet's shoulder blades and acts as permanent identification. ALWAYS have an ID tag with all your current contact information on your pet's collar. Check your gates after your gardener leaves to make sure they are closed. Use a baby gate in your front hallway so a skittish pet cannot run through an open door. If your dog is very timid, tell groomers and vet-techs that you do not want your dog walked outside if you have to leave them at the spa or vet hospitals. Their collars will be removed during grooming or medical procedures and your dog will be left unprotected without ID if they manage to get away. Many dogs and cats will also run away during national holidays, frightened by firework displays, so keep them inside. Best to take extra measures to secure your pets during thunderstorms as well.

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS FROM

BOSTON BUDDIES, INC.

Our experience time and time again is that missing pets most often are reunited with their owners because of signs posted in the area - either by the person who found the pet or the person who lost the pet.  Hanging signs and posters in the area where the pet was lost should be a priority.   If you have not found your pet within a few days go back to the area where you posted your signs and posters and replace any that have been removed and hang even more in a wider area of coverage.   And don't forget to be a good citizen and go back and remove the posters and signs when you do find your pet!

You should also call the microchip company that your pet's microchip is registered with and make sure the contact information is up to date and that they flag your pet's file to indicate that the pet is lost.  Many of the microchip companies are offering expanded services that will send out notifications to vet offices within a certain mile radius of where your pet went missing - ask your microchip company if they offer this service for your particular registration.

Online ads are another effective way to communicate with a widespread audience about your pet's disappearance - you can post a Lost Ad on Craigs List in the appropriate area and also on Recycler.com  You should also peruse the ads posted on both these online sources for anyone who may have found your pet.

Findtoto.com is the country's first lost pet phone alert system.  The service sends out recorded phone alerts to residents in the area where your dog disappeared. 

You can also contact the breed rescue groups in your area to notify them that you have lost your pet - they usually have volunteers who are scouting the online listings for the local shelters each day and they may receive a call from someone who has found your pet.  If you are not sure what breed rescues operate in your area you can always go to Petfinder and type in the breed and zip code of where you are and see what rescue groups show up in your search results.   Boston Buddies will post Lost and Found notices on our website if you provide us with the appropriate information.

Make sure you notify all of the local shelters and ask them if you can post a Lost Pet flyer in their lobby or register your lost pet in their system or record book.  Keep checking back with them and if possible visit the shelters in person every day and walk the kennel areas to see if you see your dog.   Remember, shelter personnel are dealing with many different animals every single day and the particular staff member you talk to may not have been working on the day your pet was brought into the shelter.  Make sure you talk to both the front desk personnel and the staff who actually work back in the kennel areas as they are the ones who see and interact with each of the dogs there.

Most importantly, don't panic and don't give up hope.   Many lost pets are reunited with their owners within hours or just a few days, others are reunited after much longer periods of time.