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Friday, April 15, 2011

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!