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.