What To Do If Your Pet Disappears

If your dog or cat strays from home, it can be a traumatic experience for both of you. Here are some tips that we hope will help you find your pet:

• Search the neighborhood. Walk or drive through your neighborhood several times each day. Ask neighbors, letter carriers and delivery people if they have seen your pet. Hand out a recent photograph of your pet and information on how you can be reached if your pet is found.
• Contact local animal shelters and animal control agencies. File a lost pet report with every shelter within a 20-mile radius of your home and visit the nearest shelters daily, if possible.   You also may contact the local police and the county’s Sheriff’s Department. Provide these agencies with an accurate description and a recent photograph of your pet. Notify the police if you believe your pet was stolen.
• Advertise. Post notices at grocery stores, community centers, veterinary offices, traffic intersections, online at www.findtoto.com  and www.pets911.com  at pet supply stores and other locations. Also, place advertisements in newspapers. Include your pet’s sex, age, weight, breed, color and any special markings.  Leave out one identifying characteristic so you can ask the person who finds your pet to describe it.  That way you can be sure it is not a scam.
• Be wary of pet-recovery scams.  If a stranger who claims to have found your pet, ask him or her to describe the pet thoroughly (see above) before you offer any information. If he does not include the identifying characteristic you left out of the advertisements, he may not really have your pet.
• Don’t give up. Animals that have been lost for months have been reunited with their owners.  Have faith.
• Learn a valuable lesson.  If your pet didn’t have a tag or color (or a license), get them.  If microchips are available do this as well.

Revised 12.31.08

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