Lost and Found: Getting (and Keeping) Our Pets Home Safely
By Steph Selice
Steph Selice volunteered as an adoption counselor at King Street Cats in Alexandria for seven years.
Pet people are always concerned about keeping their animals from getting lost. We’re fortunate to have new, inventive digital tools to find our lost pets. But these methods still need to be paired with old-fashioned, analog footwork to be effective.
Microchipping, Tattooing, and Tags
Experts agree that cats, dogs, and some other pets should be microchipped and sometimes tattooed to help identify them. Veterinarians and animal shelters or rescues can microchip pets. Small mammals like rabbits and ferrets can be microchipped, as well as horses, birds, tortoises, and even snakes! Microchips are designed to last 25 years. After paying a one-time registration fee with a national microchip database service like Home Again or PetLink, our pets are tracked for their entire lives. Our responsibility is to update their information and make sure we have current photos and veterinary records. PetKey.org and other services register all brands of microchips and have free searchable lost/found databases.
Tattooing a dog or cat is a safe supplement to microchipping but is not what vets would recommend as a pet’s only ID. A sturdy collar with an ID tag is still essential. But because pets can slip their collars, microchipping is now the gold standard for identifying lost pets.
New-School Tracking Tech
Many pet lovers now use tracking devices with GPS, Bluetooth, or radio-frequency tech to track their pets.
GPS devices track pets by satellite and may require more battery power than other trackers. GPS trackers can be in standby mode until a human wants to know exactly where a pet is. Active tracking uses battery charge faster. Humans can create safe zones for their pets, tracking them by phone from miles away. But GPS can be expensive, and satellite tracking sometimes doesn’t work.
Bluetooth and radio frequency tracking offer alternatives and useful features that may cost less than GPS but may not be as effective. Various apps such as TrackiPet use a subscription tracking device that reports real-time tracking every few seconds.
When Your Pet Is Lost
Footwork and in-person follow-up often make the difference in bringing a beloved animal home.
When you can’t find your pet, check your space (especially closets and basements), yard, and your neighbors’. Dogs, cats, rabbits, and other small animals sometimes burrow into bedding, furniture, car seats, and even insulation and walls. Check, then check again.
After you’ve looked everywhere close to home, contact your pet’s microchip service. Their sites help create electronic posters you can share on social media in your neighborhood; local vets, hospitals, and rescues; and community bulletin boards. Ask everyone to share and repost in Public mode. Post on Facebook, Nextdoor, Craigslist, Instagram, Ring, and other sites. Pet FBI, Petco Love Lost, 24PetConnect, PetBoost, and Petkey are pet-centered, nationwide, and free.
Print out your pet’s poster in color and put it up around your neighborhood, in stores and businesses, and on telephone poles and bus-stop shelters. Tell everyone you know that your pet’s lost.
File reports with your local shelters and animal control department, and plan on visiting the shelters regularly. In-person visits are essential. Shelter staff are swamped, and there is no universal lost-pet database. Recovery rates from shelters are low, partly because humans don’t follow up on their lost pets in person. But combining database reporting with social-media posts and in-person shelter visits exponentially increases your chances of being reunited with your pet.
Keep a carrier or crate with favorite food or treats ready. A Good Samaritan may need your help to bring your pet home, so be ready to go when you get the call. Even if your pet only lives indoors, keep some food or water outside.
One reminder from experts about revealing all you know about your pet: Sometimes people claim to have an animal and demand payment before returning it. Hold back some identifying information about your pet until you confirm any “found” reports are legitimate.
When You Find A Pet
Our instincts as animal lovers are to help lost pets. But it’s important to do so safely. If an animal appears aggressive, call animal control or the police. Approach animals you don’t know carefully and quietly, and contain them in a carrier or box with airholes, or on a leash/lead for dogs. Use food or treats as a lure, and don’t try to hold the animal unnecessarily.
Some people worry about bringing found pets right to shelters. (They’re concerned about animals being euthanized.) But everyone agree that checking for collar ID and microchips comes next, so be sure the pet is scanned for it at a shelter, vet, or police station. Even if you’ve left a message for the pet’s human, contact local shelters and animal control and file “found” reports.
If you’re concerned about leaving the animal at a shelter, take a photo and ask the shelter to add a “found” report to their lost-and-found database. Use the photo to file reports with found-pet services like those listed above, and follow the steps recommended if you lost your pet to notify your neighbors that you may have found theirs. Local papers often post free “found” ads online and in print.
And thank you for helping reunite them!
Resources
https://petfbi.org/search.html#/
https://petkey.org/Search-Lost-Pet
https://cats.com/best-cat-tracker
Area Animal Shelters/Rescues
Animal Welfare League of Alexandria
4101 Eisenhower Avenue
Alexandria, VA 22304
703-838-4774
Animal Welfare League of Arlington
2650 S. Arlington Mill Drive
Arlington, VA 22206
(703) 931-9241
http://www.awla.org
Fairfax County Animal Shelter
4500 West Ox Road
Fairfax, VA 22030
703-830-1100
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/animalshelter/
King Street Cats
25 S. Dove Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-231-7199
https://www.kingstreetcats.org/
Operation Paws for Homes, Inc.
(Dog rescue for VA, MD, DC, and south central PA)
P.O. Box 90813
Alexandria, VA 22309
703-344-7320
operationpawsforhomes@gmail.com
https://ophrescue.org/
Rikki’s Refuge Animal Sanctuary
(1300 animals and 22 species on 450 acres)
Kerry Hilliard, Director
P.O. Box 1357
Orange, VA 22960
540-854-0870
By appointment: tours@rikkisrefuge.org; events@rikkisrefuge.org