Weatherproofing Fliers

All notices posted should be weather-proofed!

Page protectors are common, as are large ziplock bags. Clear contact paper can be used.

Remember when using page protectors to put the opening at the bottom! Here's a sign I encountered once that was printed on really good quality paper, so the flier itself was fine. But can you tell that the page protecters is holding several ounces of water?

Sighting Responses

It can be pretty exciting when, while a dog is missing, a sighting is reported. Hope comes alive, especially after a time with no sightings.

Sightings can change the direction of a search. When a sighting report comes in that is 4 blocks from where the dog is thought to be, fliering starts up in the new area and feeding stations are set up in the new area

False sightings aren't good, of course. It goes with out saying. But when you really want sightings and there haven't been any for a time, that last thing you want a sighting to be is a false sighting.

But because the possibility is always there, standard procedure calls for verifying the validity of a sighting. Always do that.

When a sighting call comes in, most people know to go to the area and search to see if the dog sighted is still in the area. What a lot of people don't know is that you also want to canvass the area, talking to everyone you can find, asking if they have seen such a dog, or if they know of a dog with a simlar look that resides in the area.

If the lost dog's owner or a volunteer are quick to deny that the dog sighted could be any dog other than the lost dog in question, probe them. I've been known to demand that questioning continue "until you find the dog in the neighborhood that looks like our lost dog, because the dog sighted was not our lost dog". (And yes, the expected dog has been found in such cases.)

For pet detectives or lost dog recovery specialists, this is one of the discussion items that belongs on the (lengthy) list of those that get covered early on. Too bad there are so many items on that list.

So, what are you doing? You have a picture of the dog, and copies of the flier and biz cards. You walk around the area, looking for people you can see moving about, be they residents if it's a residential area, or anyone moving through it such as service or delivery people, mail carriers, professional dog walkers. Stop and talk to those you see, but also knock on doors.

Show a picture of the lost dog, and state that there was a sighting of a dog matching its description. Ask if the person has seen a dog like that, and ask if the person knows anything about a dog that might live in the area that could have been seen and believed to be the lost dog. If yes, ask where that dog lives, so that you can go there and ask if said dog had been out on its own recently.

It's tough to get pumped up from a sighting, and then have the sighting shot down in this way. But it's a necessary task. As disappointing as this is, sightings need to be uncovered as false when they are, in fact, false sightings.

Fundraising for Lost Dog Searches

The search for a lost dog can be amazingly expensive. And yet often, there are many people that would be willing to and would want to donate to the cause if they were asked or at least offered an easy way to do so when their friends, family or even total strangers with compelling stories find themselves in a lost dog search.

Websites such as the following offer easy ways to allow people to donate large or small amounts to a search:

http://www.chipin.com/

http://www.firstgiving.com/

http://www.fundrazr.com/

And there are more that you may be aware of.

As a lost dog recovery specialist, I encourage dog owners (or responsible parties) to consider this option. It's very easy to set up a fundraising account, and link it to a Paypal account. What happens is that funds raised go into a bank account, via Paypal, and what sites like Chipin or Fundrazr or FirstGiving do is provde an image that displays the details of the fundraising effort in an interesting image that is dynamic, and changes as new donations are entered. They also provide a single page devoted to the fundraising effort, allowing you space to make a case for why people should donate to your cause.

Here's an example of a ChipIn "widget" as it's called, which might be placed on a website such as a blog that is centered around a search for a lost dog:

Sadly in the example case, this dog's owner did not publicize the fundraising effort after setting up the account, so this example doesn't show the many contributors and high dollar amounts that you can sometimes see for lost dog searches.

When you set up an account, you get (1) html code to place the image on a website, and (2) a hyperlink to a page which can be sent out in emails, posted to Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, bulletin boards, on websites -- you name it.

And you would be amazed at the response you can get when you ask for help, particularly when you make it this easy, and if you engage people in the search by posting updates. That applies to friends, family and to total strangers!

Many people don't want to go this route at all because they want to fund the search themselves. Sometimes it is that they don't know how expensive it can get, sometimes they are just to uncomfortable to ask for help, and often it is because they assume that no one will be able to or be interested in helping in this way.

For me, it's standard to advise people to consider this option. Check out what fundraising is like today with sites such as these.

Ask For Help

That's the message from this blog update!

It's one of the first messages I try to give to people looking for their lost dogs when I have only time for a few messages. And believe me, it's hard to fit it in because there are really quite a number of items that make up the list of the first things to coach a lost dog owner/guardian about.

There are so many anecdotes and illustrations that breathe life into the "ask for help" statement. I will focus on just one, which you can read and/or watch for yourself. It's the story of Domino, a rat terrier in whose home is in Phoenix and who went missing in California

When Kim and Jason, Domino's mom and dad, vacationed for a week in San Diego, Domino naturally joined them. It was a family vacation, after all. While on a walk with one of the friends, Domino got away. Long story short, Kim and Jason ended up having to leave and return to Phoenix after several days, without Domino.

For several weeks, Kim searched online, and did everything she could think of using the internet. In an online posting, she saw that someone spotted a small terrier type dog, and though it was quite a distance from where Domino went missing, Kim knew enough to at least check it out. She contacted the poster, a woman named Vicki. It didn't take long to establish that the dog Vicki saw was not Domino. But during the time that the conversation took place, and perhaps in part being drawn out by Vicki's warm personality, Kim opened up to Vicki and shared her grief and desperation for help.

After a couple of days, Vicki realized that she was compelled to help. With posters in hand and friends expressing draw dropping disbelief at what she was doing, she set out on the hour-and-a-half drive from Laguna Beach to San Diego to put up posters. Vicki had never done anything like this.

While putting up just the second poster, she was approached by someone certain that this was the dog she had been seeing for a few weeks. So, Vicki found Domino in record time! But all her attempts to get her to come to her failed -- so much that she called Kim to come and get Domino herself. Kim tore out of her house, with no airline ticket, and caught the first flight she could get to San Diego, where Vicki picked her up. And Domino needed only to hear Kim's voice to come running!

It's a wonderful, wonderful story. and you can watch the long and/or the short version of the story told by Vicki, and read the story as told in the Orange County Register.

9 minute version: 

3 minute version: 

Written version with pictures: 

If you are one who helps people find their lost dogs, you may not always have the time to tell this story. And frantic lost dog owners don't have time to watch or read it as they worry for the safety of their pets, and miss them so terribly.

But if this story helps to impress on you the importance of encouraging people to ask for help, or at least allowing them to do so when they offer (and I watch people refuse help all the time), then I've done what I wanted to do.

Pet Harbor

Pet Harbor. Ever heard of it? I guess I would say that Pet Harbor is for animal shelters what Petfinder is for homeless animals in search of new homes.

If there’s one site that most (but sadly, not all) rescue organizations and municipal animal shelters use to post their adoptable pets, it would be Petfinder.com. The site uses good technology, and it’s been promoted well enough that it has become the website of choice for posting adoptable rescue animals. I see this as a good thing.

And if there’s one website that most animal shelters use to post pictures and information about the stray pets they take in and house (again, there isn’t!), then that website would be petharbor.com. Pet Harbor is also used for posting shelters’ adoptable pets, but the stray pets posting is what I concern myself with and what I’m referring to. I wouldn’t say that its technology or promotion, and therefore usage, is quite on a par with petfinder.com, but it’s “good enough”. Instructions for using the Pet Harbor website are at eHow, and you can find some statistical data about its traffic at faqs.org.

While there’s not really a substitute for going into a shelter and checking in person, by far the closest thing to that is checking petharbor.com. It’s not without its drawbacks and downsides, and it takes some exploration to figure out its navigation, but it should never be dismissed. It should be a standard part of every search for a missing pet. By that I mean checking it several times a day.

The job can easily be assigned to someone other than the dog’s frantic and depressed owner. In fact, it can be done by someone not anywhere near the area where the dog was lost if that person has a few good pictures of the dog to use for comparisons against the pictures of lost dogs in shelters that are posted to Pet Harbor. Many a lost dog owner has told me “I don’t know many people here since I only moved here a while ago, so no, I don’t have people that can help me with the search” to which I’ve responded in this way:

“Do you have family, college roommates , former neighbors or anyone in your life that live in other parts of the country, but love you and want to help you when you need help? Are there people that would actually be hurt if you didn’t let them help you when you are down? Don’t YOU have friends in other parts of the country that you would want to help in times of need? Let one or two of those people help you by handling the Pet Harbor searching for your lost dog.”

In order to put Pet Harbor to the best use, check in with the shelters in your area that use it, and find out how often the shelter staff and volunteers post to it, and in general, how seriously THEY take it. Hopefully you will find that they update it several times a day. If so, then you should have someone checking it several times a day during any lost dog search.

I operate with people that search through Pet Harbor and Craigslist every day, and who have therefore helped MANY strangers reunite with their lost dogs by telling them something that they didn’t know: that their dog is at the shelter. Often, a person files a lost dog report with the shelter and they then feel they have “checked the box” and they never check back, or even plan to, because they assume they will get a call if the dog makes its way in to the shelter. Many people never learn that they can check the shelter dogs with Pet Harbor.

So if you feel like being a hero, get in the habit of checking Pet Harbor as soon as you learn about a dog that has gone missing. Eventually it will pay off!

Fliers in Residental Mailboxes

I think most people have heard, somewhere along the way, that it’s illegal to put missing pet (or any) fliers in mail boxes – right? You probably don’t actually question it, but if you’re like me, you’d really like to see the code that spells it out. And I have it for you.

There are several codes to look at to get the full picture. You want to look at Title 18, Section 1725, which you can find at: http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/18C83.txt. (This is on the US House of Representatives' website.) Here’s how it reads:

TITLE 18 - CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

PART I - CRIMES

CHAPTER 83 - POSTAL SERVICE

Sec. 1725. Postage unpaid on deposited mail matter

-STATUTE- Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits any mailable matter such as statements of accounts, circulars, sale bills, or other like matter, on which no postage has been paid, in any letter box established, approved, or accepted by the Postal Service for the receipt or delivery of mail matter on any mail route with intent to avoid payment of lawful postage thereon, shall for each such offense be fined under this title.

And here’s a more reader-friendly version, on the Cornell University Law School site:



Click for a larger view

Then you also want to look on the US Postal Service’s website at the Domestic Mail Manual, then search on “Customer Mail Receptacles”, the second and third paragraphs. Get straight to it by going to: http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/508.htm. The important parts are where it says:

“Door slots and non-lockable bins or troughs used with apartment house mailboxes are not letterboxes within the meaning of 18 USC 1725 and are not private mail receptacles for the standards for mailable matter not bearing postage found in or on private mail receptacles. The post or other support is not part of the receptacle”
and
“no part of a mail receptacle may be used to deliver any matter not bearing postage, including items or matter placed upon, supported by, attached to, hung from, or inserted into a mail receptacle. Any mailable matter not bearing postage and found as described above is subject to the same postage as would be paid if it were carried by mail.”

Here’s a visual for you:

Click for a larger view

And last, though I couldn’t find an the actual bulletin, I found a quote that was in a USPS Postal Bulletin, Issue 21861, 2-17-94, p. 37 (wouldn’t you know that the USPS started putting its bulletins online in 1995), entitled "Mailable Matter in or on Private Mail Receptacles” which reads as follows:

"Mailable matter not bearing postage found in or on private mail receptacles represents a revenue deficiency to the Postal Service and is a violation of federal law. Title 18 United States Code, section 1725, provides for a fine of not more than $300 per piece for these violations. All employees must uniformly enforce the procedures detailed in the Domestic Mail Manual, section P011.2.0. The failure to enforce these procedures uniformly may jeopardize the criminal prosecution of repeated violators."

You may also find this page helpful:  http://www.lplists.com/mail-off.htm

What's your interpretation? Mine is -- steer clear of residential mailboxes! But feel free to put them in a newspaper box, in a mail slot, or at the front door, such as hanging in a bag on the knob, or rolled up and threaded through the handle.

Here's an important point for pet detectives or for organized volunteers assisting in a specific search -- remember to cover this important regulation with the missing pet's people early in the game. I once stepped in to a search late on the very afternoon that the dog's people had spent hours, before my arrival and before we could talk, putting fliers into mailboxes in the rural area where the dog had been seen. That night, she recieved an angry email from a resident who had found a flier in her mailbox, stating that he was filing a complaint with the post office since it's illegal to put fliers in mailboxes. Sure enough he did, on Monday. The lost dog's person got off easy, with a warning from a postal worker who obviously hated being placed in the position of having to contact her. But she did break a law. And this was very awkward for me since volunteering to assist people search for and recover their lost dogs is what I do, so I can't be any part of breaking federal, or local, laws.

It was a lesson for me . . . however the problem is that there are a TON of important points that all need to be covered with the people as the first item of business when starting to help someone search for their missing pet!

Unremovable Scent Trails

This update passes on a tiny tip, or trick, to put in your bag if you are a pet detective or a lost dog recovery volunteer or specialist. It’s one of those brilliant ideas that, when Donna, my lost dog searching associate, came up with it, I said a silent prayer of thanks for having hooked up with her to do this type of volunteer work.

We had been searching for a dog that had been sighted a few times, and tracked just about as many times by a missing pet scent trailing dog, well trained and with years of experience, that our area is lucky to have. It seems that he had been sticking to well travelled routes. There was plenty of automobile and foot traffic where this dog had been spotted and scented.

As is normally the case when trying to recover a dog known to be at large for a period of time, we believed that when this dog was encountered, he would not come easily, so that the effort would shift from a search effort to a recovery effort. We knew we needed to at least plan to use a humane trap, and if it turned out that he came running once he saw and smelled his family member, then great.

Since he was traveling such a highly populated area, we knew that we needed a way to draw him off the beaten path, because any humane trap we would set up had to be located away from the traffic. It needed to be in a spot that wouldn’t draw the attention of humans. This is always true, pretty much.

But what could we use to lead him astray, so to speak, when he seemed so intent on sticking to sidewalks? Naturally, a scent lure came to mind quickly. Bread crumbs, literally? No, if nothing else, any kind of treat or meat trail or something like that would be gobbled up overnight by other free ranging animals of all types – raccoons, squirrels, foxes, possums, cats, you name it. Once that happened, even if the other animals didn’t follow the trail to the bonus feeding station, the trail leading the prized dog off of his route would be gone.

Although the dog has never been seen or scented since, and we don’t know where he is today, the solution to that problem has stuck with me, and I would love to pass it on and eventually, get feedback to see how this works for others to resolve this particular problem. The solution is: a grease trail.

Donna got some fast food joint to agree to hold out a container of grease for her, though when she picked it up, the guy saved too small a container to work for us since we needed to lay a longer trail than the grease would have created. So we ended up picking up bottled gravy or broth or something like that. But the idea is the same – some form of scent trail that isn’t removable as would be a trail of food or articles of clothing.

As I’m writing this, I’m remembering that this is the same thing as the scent water that we instruct bonded dog owners to create. We instruct them to soak dirty socks in water, bottle the water, and spray a scent trail from a sighting location to their home. This is actually huge – when there is a relationship between the lost dog and the person. Where the dog is newly adopted, or fostered, or just in from transport (such as a rescue dog brought in to our suburban area from high kill shelters in rural areas, a common rescue practice), this grease trail is well worth trying.

If you use this luring method, let me know how it works!

What's in a Name?

When spreading the word about a lost dog, typically for the purpose of making people aware of whom they can contact if they’ve seen or taken in the dog, should the dog’s name be part of the information made available to the public?

There’s plenty of debate on the subject. The question goes all the way back to the dog’s collar tags, and whether the tag should list the dog’s name. Then if the dog goes missing, the question comes up again when fliers are being designed. What are the advantages and disadvantages as you see them?

There is no right or wrong answer. But there are considerations for and against. The final decision is one that you, or the dog’s owner/guardian, need to make.

Many lost dogs have been taken in by persons with less than the best of intentions. It has probably happened many times that when such people have had the benefit of knowing the dog’s name, whether by the tag or from fliers, they have had an easier time assimilating the beloved lost dog into their own lives, and never returning the dog to its owner. That’s a scary thought, that a dog can be “led astray” so to speak, by someone addressing him or her by name.

On the other hand, if the finder is well intended, and has the opportunity to address the dog by name, it can have a calming effect on a dog that has lost its way. Tucker was lost for weeks, also losing a lot of weight and gaining a lot of cockleburs along the way. When he allowed a couple to get close enough to see his tag, and his name, they noticed that he was, as they said, a different dog once he heard his name. He was reunited with his family two days later.

A hazard of publicizing the name of a lost dog that we've seen many times is that when a person that spots the dog wandering or running on its own, recognizes the dog from fliers or other methods through which the word has been spread, then her or she may be more likely to call out to the dog, using its name. Unfortunately, calling a skittish, frightened lost dog is very often the worst thing to do. So in that sense, it can be better to not provide the dog's name to the public, but just a description.

A dog’s first name on its tag has also been known to give a local animal hospital employee a way to find the owner when the dog’s rescuer walked in with him after having picked him up near where the business was located. She searched their customer database for dogs with that first name, and found the dog’s owner within minutes. You can read that story at http://www.drvicki.org/pr-lessons.html.

Another advantage to including the dog's name when spreading the word of a lost dog comes into play when posting ads to Craigslist. In many communities with their own Craigslist, there are good Samaritans that troll the site looking to make matches between lost and found dogs posted there, or perhaps there and such sites as Pet Harbor or Fido Finder. It can make the job easier for these volunteers, who may be juggling numerous missing pets at once, if there are names associated with the lost, or found, dogs they are trying to match up. Mari Levine of Watsonville CA is one such person that does this on a regular basis.

Many dogs that go missing don’t have names that they recognize. For example, a dog new to a rescue situations that has had a troubled past life may be more apt to flee than would a well adjusted dog with a bonded owner. This may include dogs in transport from a rural high kill shelter to a suburban rescue organization, a dog in the fostering stage, a newly adopted dog. If a dog doesn’t recognize its name, then there is less reason to publicize the name that is being used for the dog than if he or she does respond to a name.

What do you think? Does it vary from case to case? What pro's and con's for providing a lost dog's name can you add to the list?

Survival of the Fittest

I believe that one of the reasons that many dogs spend time in shelters is because, for a myriad of reasons, their owners or guardians give up the search for them. Some such dogs end their lives in shelters, some go on to be adopted, and possibly leaving other truly homeless dogs unadopted. But all dogs in shelters, even for short periods of time, require resources that have to come from somewhere, and be paid for. So, keeping lost dogs out of shelters is a good reason to learn how to recover lost dogs.

Of the many reasons that owners give up the search, one of the saddest for me is that they decide that their dog isn’t going to survive on its own long enough to be found, and captured. Between elements, wildlife and cars, many people begin to experience doubts very quickly if their pet has never spent much time on its own. It can be very difficult convincing someone not to give up a search after a couple of days.

Toby’s story of survival is one that is quick to tell, but it’s powerful. Little Toby materialized after almost four weeks on the lam.

He is a shih tsu, weighing nearly 15 pounds when he ran off, fearful of many things. He had been adopted into a new home the day after Christmas, after having spent a few months in a foster home after his rescue organization had received him from a backyard breeder. Not much is known about him, but he most likely was given few opportunities for socialization, and wasn’t taught to be confident in himself and his abilities. However, there’s no indication that he had had ever had to fend for himself.

Toby backed out of his harness three days after he arrived in his new home, on December 29th.

Over the next four weeks, there were a few sightings, and a lot of effort on the part of many volunteers who came together to search for him, make sure that feeding stations were monitored, and fliers were hung.

Just a half a mile from where most of the sightings were, on recovery day (January 24th), he was seen by a family that owns chickens. This little dog that was later, after his capture, found to be emaciated, severely dehydrated, covered in burrs, have lost about a third of his body weight, and who started out as skittish dog lacking in confidence, had killed one of their chickens!

Now who really knows if this kill was intended by Toby so he could consume the chicken, or if perhaps he was trying to eat the chicken feed and ended up needing to defend himself against the chicken. It doesn’t matter; it’s still a story that surprises people. Most people don't expect a tiny and weak little dog who had never lived on his own to be able to take down a chicken, whether in defense or for consumption.



Toby at home after his ordeal. He doesn't really make you think "survivor", does he? But he is!!

Hopefully the story can be used to convince lost dog owners in the future that their dog’s likely have more survival skills and instincts than they realize, and to keep up the search for their beloved missing pets.

Bonded Person as Lure

After my last update, I will offer a contradictory lesson, since I’ve learned both lessons. Both are important.

I had briefly discussed a scientific explanation of why a dog that has been out on its own for a while, eating a bad diet, will fail, at lealst initially, to recognize its owner when seen, heard and even smelled.

It remains true, that in many cases, a dog will show no signs of recognition when first reunited with a person or people with whom he was bonded before disappearing. But on the other hand, and in other cases, the dog’s bonded owner, or anyone that had been close to the dog before it went missing, may still be the best lure there is.

When Vixen went missing, we were told all about her many fears. There was almost nothing and no one that she was not afraid of. After a few days of fliers, large signs, and other outreach to the community about Vixen and her plight, we started to receive sighting calls from people that were seeing her. This gave us our first ideas about where to start putting feeding stations, which we would want to swap out for a humane trap. Pretty soon, we realized that we had a problem since the chance that she would approach even a feeding station was looking really remote.

But protocol was to contact the people that she had stayed with before she was adopted – two days before she went missing, by the way. Prior to that, she had spent several months in a dog day care facility, after having been rescued from a bad situation. Several of the employees had become familiar to her, so they were to be called if a live sighting was to come in.

And such a sighting call did come in, and they were called. After all that build-up, Vixen pretty much went right to the person within minutes of her arrival.

So, the successful lure here wasn’t food, which we always think of first when considering possible lures. It was a familiar and trusted person.

I could point to any number of stories that ended similar to Vixen’s story, with family members serving, in effect, as the lure. Luna’ story is another one that I will tell.

When we were working together to try to round up a stray beagle that had taken up residence in a neighborhood, we posted a picture from our wildlife camera, once we captured the first few, to Craigslist. We were looking for the owner, and within a day, a woman came forward after comparing our picture to those of her family’s beagle that had disappeared four weeks earlier, from their home 22 miles away. The woman came out with her small children and her mother. Once she emerged from the woods, it did take the dog a few minutes to focus, or to catch a whiff of their scent, or do whatever it took to recognize the family. When she did, she went running to them. I’d love to have seen it, as I’m sure it was a beautiful scene.

The advice, then, for the pet detective, is to caution the dog’s owner that the dog may not recognize the person, but then also, to include people that the dog was bonded to among the responders for live sighting calls.

Don't Take this Personally

A dog over in the next county from me, Sage, was lost for over a month, leading up to Christmas. A local paper just published a story about it. From the perspective of someone that has read, and lived, many stories of dogs lost and recovered, the story was nice, but not remarkable.

However, a paragraph in the story told me something that I had known nothing about, and it caused an important lesson to click for me.

Sage had been found, and Carrie was called by Animal Control to come and get her. This occurred several hours after Carrie had the good fortune to have seen Sage with her own eyes (thanks to a sighting called in to her), and then watch her dog retreat and disappear because she didn’t recognize her owner (of thirteen years). Carrie had called gently to Sage, but Sage didn’t recognize her by sight or sound.

In the article, Carrie explained what she understood about why Sage couldn’t recognize her.


So I tried looking it up. Most of the information on the topic that I’ve found is pretty dry, and not an easy read for a person like myself without a science background to take in fully. And honestly, I have yet to find more than a very few sites that seem to be interested in detailing the relationship between serotonin and short term memory (although the relationship between serotonin and depression are much easier to find.) But I did find a 2002 article published in Science Daily, entitled Depletion Of Body Chemical Can Cause Memory, Mood Changes, that explained it in terms easier for the lay person to grasp.

If I'm paraphrasing correctly, scientists at the Brain and Behavior Institute at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands lowered the levels of the amino acid tryptophan, and as a result, those of the chemical messinger known as serotonin, in 27 volunteers. Among other effects, the article's author Wim J Riedel and colleagues found  impaired ability to recall and recognize words they learned during the period when the tryptophan (and serotonin) levels were lowered, yet not before this period. As stated in the article, "while the study is not definitive and does not offer a solid conclusion that eating more tryptophan will enhance memory or mood, it does indicate a possible connection."

Up to now, I've always had to be vague about the reasons when I coach lost dog owners to avoid calling out to their dogs when seeing them, as long as they are still uncontained, of course. I do always, always explain that they need to be prepared for their dog to not recognize them, and to not take it personally. Of course, some will say "oh my dog will recognize me" and I then do my best to convince them that the dog MIGHT not recognize them, and that there is a lot of precedent for making this statement.

I do want to continue reading on the subject to understand it more fully, and to find more evidence of this concept, and a link between what is found in people and what's found in dogs. But, it's great to now be able to give an explanation with a little science behind it. If a dog's diet, or food intake, while at large for a prolonged period is lacking in tryptophan, you may be able to predict that the dog will be less likely to immediately recognize the owner during their initial encounter.

The Case for Offering a Reward

I so dislike that my advice must always be to offer a reward for a lost dog -- because I so dislike the whole reward concept.

In nearly every case with almost no exceptions, searches for lost dogs get very expensive even before a reward is paid out. And with the stress and anguish that the lost dog's people have typically gone through, often when they did nothing to bring it on (a contractor left a gate open, for example, or a dog went missing while being cared for by someone else, be it a friend, family member or paid caregiver or service provider), paying out the extra money for a reward can greatly increase that stress.

If the dog was found by a kid, that's cool. They don't have many ways of earning their own money, so they get excited about that. And they have no concept of what could be a hardship for a person who's already depleted their checking account to shell out even more money as a reward. So I'm all for a kid being given a reward. Or if a homeless person finds the dog, or someone who wants to donate a reward to charity, or someone who actually worked to try to find the dog -- even if only for the reward -- then those are scenarios where a reward is fine. And when the lost dog's person is just so happy that they are reunited with the dog that they actually want to part with even more money in the name of the reward, then fine.

But it's a slippery slope, paying out big rewards to every day people for returning dogs to their people when they didn't really do much of anything to find the owner beyond checking tags or responding to a flier or a notice they recieved. I know that when I see news stories of people paying out huge sums of money in the name of rewards, I am concerned that they are encouraging people to do unscrupulous things to collect rewards.

The best story I have seen to illustrate the importance of just offering a reward even if you have an issue with rewards, it is Dixie's story, told at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=107988595892223. Get ready to be inflamed.

And after you read it, think about how many more people might be out there, smarter than the jerk in the story who wouldn't even pretend or play along, to allow Dixie's dad to believe that he was Dixie's hero, and be happy about giving this guy a large reward for her safe return. How many people that are given rewards out there for unselfish acts really committed very selfish acts for those rewards?

We will never know. But I always, always advise offering a reward for the safe return of a lost dog.

How do others feel about the size of a reward for the return of a lost dog? Visit http://mypetsblog.info/?p=9422 to find out!

To Stake Out or Not to Stake Out

I recall a lesson that I took away from the very first lost dog search I joined, one that was, sadly, unsuccessful. I had been interested in “lost dogs” for many years and had done as much self study as I could figure out how to do. But I hadn’t learned this.

The effort was for a dog whose story had been chronicled in the local newspapers, and the volunteer base was a pretty good size. After they felt that the fliering was sufficient, the search organizers utilized the volunteers for mostly just one thing -- to come out each evening to the location of the latest sightings, stake out a particular spot, and watch for the dog. I followed the instructions, and would monitor this post or that one from my car, sometimes with a partner, sometimes not.

The sightings had already begun to grow older and colder by the day at the time I began my participation. Eventually I came to understand that there is a good possibility that the intense amount of energy that all of those passionate volunteers had brought in to this quiet residential neighborhood may have been picked up loud and clear by this frightened, already skittish dog. There were deeps woods that the dog could, and may well have, retreated in to before reaching the other side and ending up who knows where from there. No trace of the dog has been found in the years since that search effort.

Ever since then, when anyone suggests a stakeout, of a feeding station or a trap or an area where a trained missing pet scent tracking dog has trailed a scent, I ask that we are sure we know exactly why we are setting up the stakeout.

I can’t say that there is never a reason for a stakeout. I’ve been the one to suggest it in cases when there hadn’t been a sighting in a couple of weeks – to hopefully generate a sighting. In areas where there are a lot of other known animals, I’ve taken a laser light pet toy and shooed away foxes and other animals approaching a trap from the distance of my car. (I think there are probably some high powered kids water toys that can also work for this.) I’ve seen people stake out a fenced enclosure with no kind of spring or closing device, without an actual plan, succeed in closing the gate behind the dog because they were staking it out. So, by no means am I saying to never do it. At times, such as with some types of traps, monitoring is necessary.

But feeding stations and most traps can work without being monitored. Feeding stations are used to lure and condition an animal to a specific area, and keep coming there when it’s deemed a reliable food source by the subject. Humane traps are made to work without monitoring.

When you want to know if the animal you are seeking is the one that’s eating from your feeding station, first look for other ways to determine this. Snow is great for showing that it was birds eating the expensive prime rib you left out for a dog you know must be starving by now. Loose dirt that will show paw prints of varying sizes can work, and if there’s none of that around, bring flour.

Motion sensored wildlife cameras can give you some of the best proof you can get. They’re expensive for the owner of one missing pet to purchase, but several of them would be a good investment for a missing pet recovery specialist since they can be used over and over again. Whether you use them to capture videos or still shots, photos confirming the right animal eating at a feeding station are invaluable, and a good alternative to a stakeout for the same purpose.

Yep, this was the long lost Radar approaching the feeding station

If you can’t get out of a stakeout, you may be able to increase the distance you can monitor from with the use of night vision. Sure, this is very pricey equipment, but there are lots of choices out there (monoculars, binoculars, goggles, glasses, scopes, cameras, and more), and some opportunities to borrow this type of equipment.

Future blog updates may deal with the question of "what if you see the animal you are looking for, then what?"

Familiar Scents v Food Scents

The basic recipe for recovering a lost dog once the dog's general location is found, but the dog won't readily come or be contained, is to lure the dog to a humane trap, and contain the dog that way.

Typically, we start with feeding stations located in spots that we can swap out with a humane trap once the dog is conditioned to come to that spot for his food when he determines that the food source is reliable.

But food isn't the only lure that works for some dogs. In cases where the lost dog is bonded to someone (meaning this doesn't work with a dog who just landed in town via transport from a shelter in another area, for example), is the scent of a person, or a dog, with which the dog was bonded. I offer a simple story to illustrate.

In the case of Rocky, a toy poodle lost while hiking in the mountains, was found after three days -- having not touched the food that was set out for him, by lying some distance away on a sweater of his person's, with his scent on it. Read Rocky's story at: http://www.malibutimes.com/articles/2009/05/20/news/news3.txt

There are a ton of stories of scent having been the ticket to luring a dog successfully. The beauty of this story is that it demonstrates the power of the familiar scent OVER the scent of food, even after three days, for a dog bonded to a specific person, since both were available to him.

Can you contribute a story by comment that illustrates how the scent of a familar person can help lure a dog, or condition him to stay in or close to a specific spot?

Craigslist - Don't Give Up

Craigslist is like no other resource for spreading the word about a missing pet. No matter where you live in the US, Craigslist is as important a posting and searching site as you will find for a lost dog recovery effort.

For people new to Craigslist, there are a few things to learn. So, people that don't know Craigslist, and don't get -- or heed -- the advice to use it to the max, do lose out on one of the very best resources available.

Over time, there will probably be plenty of lessons learned posted on this blog about Craigslist. This lesson is simply to never give up on posting to Craigslist no matter how long it's been since there was a sighting.

In some markets, such as in rural areas or those with relatively low populations (Roanoke VA as one example), a posting to the Lost & Found section of Craigslist will remain viewable for weeks or perhaps even months. This is because the traffic on Craigslist is far less than that of a more populated area such as mine in Northern Virginia. You have to get to know your market in order to make the most of Craigslist.

When a dog first goes missing, posting to Craigslist should be daily in an area like mine -- because the posting will drop out of site within 1-2 days. After a time, if the dog is still missing, dropping to a couple or three times a week is fine. At some point, it becomes fine to post weekly, and maybe monthly at the least often, if there is any real objection to posting as often as weekly. But as long as the dog's people still want the lost dog back, they should keep up Craigslist postings indefinitely.

If stories will help convince you that it pays to keep posting to Craigslist even when sightings and activity have dried up, I have three for you.  Shadow's story is my favorite; it's a must read. Shadow had vanished seventeen months earlier when a pair of Craigslist postings lead to a reunion, both of which were viewed by a third party unacquainted with either Shadow's person or the people that found him.

You may also enjoy Whitney's story and Toby's story.  In both cases, these dogs hadn't been seen in a couple of months, but their people just kept up the Craigslist postings anyway.

If you have a chance to pass only only a few tips to someone searching for a lost dog, pass on the tip to use Craigslist to its full potential.

Who Can View Stray Pets at a Shelter

Animal shelters are, it should be obvious, one of the first places to check for a missing pet, especially a dog. There are many assumptions people can make about shelters -- until they spend time at shelters, or talking to people about them, or reading up about the differences between shelters. I think they are like snow flakes, with no two being exactly alike.

A common assumption is that once you file a lost dog report with your local shelter, you can mark it off on your list and spend your time on other items. This is typically not true, and a future update will probably address that issue.

This update addresses something that I found out more recently, about a shelter in the next county over from mine. Actually, I think I heard it once before, in conjunction with a different shelter in a differnt county, but the memory of that first exposure is not so clear as this recent exposure. Here's what it's about:

At this time, there's a shih tzu lost in my general area (which is Northern Virginia), by the name of Toby. He had been adopted from one of the many local animal rescue organizaton about three days before he slipped his collar on a walk. Sightings, and tracks run by a dog trained to trail the scents of missing pets, have him basically meandering in the same neighborhood from which he was lost. The volunteers assembled are focusing on such activities as fliering, checking feeding stations, and monitoring a humane trap.

But some attempts have been made to check the Loudoun County (VA) shelter, since Toby's location is within that county. Recently a volunteer reported that she had learned from talking to the staff at the shelter which she had visited, that only the owner of a lost dog is able to view the strays in the shelter. Her point, which she made after relaying that information to us on our email list, was that we, the volunteers, would no longer be able to help Toby's adoptor in that way.

(Eventually, the adoptor dropped out of the picture, and relinquished Toby back to the rescue organization. So I guess now, volunteers from the rescue can view the stray dogs in the shelter.)

You'd better be my owner, or you can't look at me!

WHAT?????  What would be the reason for this rule????  PLENTY of people that have lost their dogs get help from others to conduct tshelter searches along with fliering, feeding station checking, etc. So, friends and other volunteers need to be able to conduct this task. Yet in Loudoun and in who knows what other counties, there are probably lots of lost dogs in the shelter that never get home because the owners can't get to the shelters, or not during operating hours, to find them.

I'll research this and eventually find some reasons for this rule. I would welcome any help from readers to figure this one out! Leave a comment, and it is emailed to me.

Let's Start Learning!

Oh wait, I already have started learning . . .  but I want to share what I've learned, and continue to learn, about searching for and recovering lost dogs. I know that some of the body of knowledge about searching for missing pets (dogs and cats if not other domestic animals) has been developed and recorded, but I believe that so much of it has yet to be.

My plan with this blog is not to try to organize the lessons, or post them in a specific order. If I waited until I could organize them, I would never even get started. But hopefully with the use of blogging features such as labeling and pages, I can eventually give the reader a way of searching for lessons on topics of interest to them -- when I have enough updates for that.

I anticipate that I will use stories from one of my other blogs, Lost Dogs Found, to illustrate lessons. In other words, I will offer a lot of anecdotal evidence to support the points I make. And hopefully I will also be able to draw some attention to blogs of associates, in other areas, with their own blogs related to searching for missing pets. See the menu at right to view some of those blogs directly.

I have been collecting stories of lost dog reunions for more than a decade, both because they are interesting and more importantly to me, to learn from them.

And I've been working to search for and recover dogs lost in my area (Northern Virginia) since 2008. (Recovering lost cats requires such different skills and tactics that I feel I should stick to just one, dogs, at least until I become expert at it, which I'm not -- yet!) Some others that do what I do call themselves pet detectives, and I may occaisionally use that term when brevity is more important than expressing my vision of what I do. I think of myself as a lost dog recovery specialist, with recovery encompassing the searching part of recovering a lost dog, while containing an at large dog is outside of searching, or working to determine the lost dog's location.

I look to this blog to help other lost dog recovery specialists, or pet detectives, learn, and to help me continue to learn, too. If the blog also helps individual lost dog owners pick up tips and hints, great. But I think of frantic owners of dogs that just escaped as needing a far more brief overview of what they need to do, and presented to them in ways that keep their stress and panicked states in mind than this blog does. The targeted reader is someone looking to use the information learned from this blog in future lost dog recovery cases, not necessarily right this minute, and especially not "yesterday"!

Best wishes to all viewing this blog. I hope you will return often in the future to learn more, and even better, to contribute to learning by blog visitors, too!