How to Find a Lost Dog
Find your lost dog–and prevent losing her in the first place.
Jolanta Benal, CPDT-KA, CBCC-KA
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How to Find a Lost Dog
You’ve probably had that heartstopping moment: you look around and suddenly realize you don’t just quite exactly know where your dog is. Usually, that feeling ends in a flood of relief a few seconds later, when you realize your view of her was blocked by another dog in an off-leash group, or when you call her and she comes crashing out of the underbrush toward you.
But sometimes there is no flood of relief–your dog has really, truly gotten lost. Today I’ll discuss what to do if that heartstopping scenario comes true for you and give you tips on how to find a lost dog.
How Not to Lose Your Dog
Better than finding your lost dog, of course, is never losing her in the first place. The best way to prevent your dog from getting lost is to teach her that coming when called is the most fun thing a dog can do, and practice, practice, practice in lots of places with lots of distractions. Another important safety measure: teach your dog to wait for permission before going out an open door or getting out of your car.
How to Find a Lost Dog
But if a fire or a natural disaster separates you from your dog, she may wind up many miles away before you even know she’s gone. Or if something has panicked her, even an excellent recall may fail you. Whatever the circumstances that separate you from your dog, don’t wait for her to find her way home. Start looking immediately. The more time goes by, the farther she may travel.
Collar Tags Can Help You Find Your Lost Dog
Your dog’s collar tags should provide contact info, not only for you but also for a backup such as your vet’s office. (By the way, that’s a flat collar that closes with a buckle or a clip. I hope you don’t use a choke or prong, but if you do, take it off when you’re not actually using it.) For travel, pet supply stores sell instant make-it-yourself tags that you can fill out with your local contact info.
A Microchip Can Help You Find Your Lost Dog
If you lose your dog, start looking for her right away–don’t wait for her to find her way back home.
Collars can fall off or be taken off, which is where microchips come in. If you got your dog from a shelter or a good breeder or rescue group, he almost certainly has a chip, so all you’ve got to do is keep the chip registry’s info up-to-date. Make sure to include at least one backup contact, such as your vet’s office, in case you can’t be reached.
Unfortunately, not all scanners can read all chips, though universal scanners come close. (1) Also, once the scanner picks up a chip, your dog’s finder still doesn’t know which of the competing registries holds your contact info. (2) The American Animal Hospital Association has developed a web-based search engine, Pet Microchip Lookup, that covers five registries–AKC’s Companion Animal Recovery, Bayer’s ResQ, HomeAgain, EIDAP, and PetLink. (3) Another site, Chloe Standard’s Check the Chip, identifies a microchip’s manufacturer, which in turn can lead your dog’s finder to the correct registry.
An Up-to-Date Microchip Can Help a Shelter Reunite You with Your Dog
Despite the flaws, a microchip hugely ups your odds of recovering your dog. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, more than half of microchipped dogs who turned up in animal shelters were reunited with their families. So were more than a third of microchipped cats. Less than a quarter of unchipped dogs went home, and, get this, less than 2 percent of unchipped cats.(4) Ouch.
Make a “Lost Dog” Poster in Advance
Use a couple of good color photos of your dog–one of her face, another of her whole body–for a basic lost-dog poster.
Opinions are mixed on whether to offer a reward, but if you do, you should probably not specify an amount. A large reward may attract extortionists and scammers.
Store the poster not only on your hard drive but also on a flash drive and in the cloud, so you can modify it, email it, and print it no matter where you are. With it, store contact info for local shelters, vet’s offices, and pet suppliers. If your dog does get lost, you will be calling all these places and putting up posters at many of them. Poster at supermarkets, gas stations, libraries, and everyplace else with a bulletin board. Hand out copies at dog parks and dog runs. Many communities ban posters on telephone poles. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t let that stop me.
Make Your “Lost Dog” Poster Eye-Catching
Kat Albrecht is a former police officer who now studies the behavior of lost pets and trains people and dogs to search for them. (5) She suggests backing your flyer with a large sheet of fluorescent-orange poster board to draw people’s eyes. Albrecht also offers a brilliant idea I haven’t seen anywhere else: use special fluorescent markers to write your lost dog’s description and your contact info on the rear window of your car.
Visit Shelters in Person to Look for Your Lost Dog
If possible, have the dog’s favorite person or people look for her in the area where she disappeared, and delegate the phone calls and postering to friends. Many shelter websites post photos of dogs brought in as strays, but visit shelters in person, too; you never know what may get overlooked in a busy, crowded place. Try to visit at least every other day. So-called “no-kill” shelters often do not take strays, but the municipal shelters legally obliged to take all animals brought to them often have no choice but to euthanize strays relatively soon for lack of space.
How large an area should you try to cover with your posters, calls, and shelter visits? According to Kat Albrecht, lost dogs travel farther in rural areas than in cities. In bad weather, dogs travel less. Panicked dogs cover more ground. Friendly dogs who approach strangers happily are likely to be picked up sooner than wary or fearful dogs.
Small dogs are likelier to be picked up than big dogs. Purebred dogs may be seen as valuable and valued, so they may be picked up sooner than mixes. Many people expect dogs of certain breeds to behave aggressively, so those dogs (and their mixes) are also less likely to find a helping hand. (6)
How Long Should You Look for Your Dog?
There’s no easy answer to the question of how long to continue your search. Of course, the odds of reunion go down as time passes, yet every so often there’s a news story of a dog found months and even years after he first went missing. Keep your microchip registration up-to-date, so there’s room for good luck to occur.
That’s all for this week’s article. I hope you’ll visit me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, where I’m Dogalini, and write to me at dogtrainer@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email. I welcome your comments and suggestions, and I answer as many questions as I can. Thank you for reading!
Notes
1. The chip responds to a radio frequency emitted by the scanner. At least three different frequencies are used in the United States, which is why not all scanners can read all chips. There is a recommended global standard, but not many US chips match it. See the American Veterinary Medical Association’s FAQ about microchips, here.
2. Edie Lau, “New Company Aspires to Clean Up Pet Microchip Mess,” VIN News Service, August 6, 2009. Accessed June 13, 2010.
3. Edie Lau, “New Microchip Search Tool Debuts,” VIN News Service, September 22, 2009. Accessed June 13, 2010. EIDAP was apparently added after this article was published; it’s listed on the AAHA’s Pet Microchip Lookup site.
4. Lord, Linda K., et al. 2009. Characterization of animals with microchips entering animal shelters. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 235(2) (July 15): 160-67. The abstract is here, but I relied on AVMA’s FAQ (see note 1) for my figures.
5. Albrecht has a terrific website, Missing Pet Partnership, with detailed advice on finding lost cats as well as lost dogs (and what to do if you find an apparently stray animal).
6. See Kathy “Kat” Albrecht, “Recovery Tips: Lost Dog Behavior.”
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Jolanta holds professional certifications in both training and behavior counseling and belongs to the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. She also volunteered with Pet Help Partners, a program of the Humane Society of the United States that works to prevent pet relinquishment. Her approach is generally behaviorist (Pavlovian, Skinnerian and post-Skinnerian learning theory) with a big helping of ethology (animal behavior as observed in non-experimental settings).