Flier Distribution Services

If you're like most people, you weren't aware that some locations have small business services that will perform flier distribution services. This means that if you're in such an area, you can refer lost dog owners that you help to such services.

Of course professional door-to-door flier distribution services certainly will bring up the cost of the search for a lost dog. But it's so very common for people with lost dogs to be unable to pull together enough people to help by volunteering to do this kind of spreading the word about the lost dog. That lack of available volunteer labor is such a huge problem that most people that can afford to employ such services, they would be lucky to have them in their area.

Here are a few such services that I found by Googling the term "flyer distribution service". It may be that none are available in your area, but continue searching the internet and talking to people to see if this type of service is offered by anyone in your area:

• http://www.myflyerguys.com
• http://www.alldelivered.com
• http://www.aaflyerservices.com
• http://www.dmsadvertising.net
• http://www.homebasedelivery.com
• http://doortodoordistributors.com
• http://www.flyersdeliveryservice.com
• http://www.localflyerdistributionservice.com
• http://www.cityflyers.net/index.php?/residential-door-to-door-joint-flyer-distribution

Scent Inhibitors

In difficult cases where the dog has basically been found but won't allow himself to be captured, trapping can be the only way.  Traps need to be checked periodically, and while it's normally most advisable to allow traps to do their work alone, often people want to stage stakeouts.

I think that often this is more to satisfy themselves that they are doing something, or if done by the dog's owners, because they are just dying to see the dog. Usually there's not some real plan for how to respond if the dog is seen. Many times I've recommended not infiltrating the dog's area with the presence of a lot of people, all their energies focused on that dog.

At any rate, if there will be humans sneaking around in the dark of night, whether just to check traps and replenish feeding or just to stare in the hopes of generating a sighting, there's a problem worth putting some effort into addressing. That is the human scent that the dog will pick up, and know that he's not alone! Any dog can recognize human scent.

Through research mostly on hunting websites, I've found that hunters know something about reducing the strength of their scent while they are out there in their hunting blinds. Here's an overview that might be worth a look. It's intended for hunters, and they are more likely to go to the extents that the author suggests than most people that would participate in a stakeout or check traps and feeding stations for a lost or a stray dog. But the education isn't bad to have.

Then I've also learned that there are many scent inhibitor products on the market. I found a product comparison website for anyone thinking of investing in such products. And I also found a recipe to make your own.

Missing Pet Voicemailing Services

One of the greatest thing to hit missing pet searches was automated voicemailing!  Find Toto service was probably the first one and most certainly is the best known.  But there are competitors in Lost My Doggie and in Pet Amber Alert

Lost My Doggie logo



To make it work, you do need to have a good reason to believe that the dog is in a certain residential area and will be seen by people receiving the voicemail message at their home landline phone. That can be the biggest problem. The services don't deliver (voicemail messages) to businesses or to cell phones.

With a growing population of people that either don't have landlines or, like me, never check the voicemail on their landline phones but every few weeks, these voicemailing services may not always work so well. But today, when they work, they work GREAT! Possibly, because cell phones can be texted to, some day a lost pet texting service idea will work. I have found one, LostPetText.com, but I don't know anyone that has ever used it and I don't think the site does a good selling job.

Also to my knowledge (and I'd love to be wrong about this), the messages are in English, so that can be another drawback if the messages are delivered to a large number of homes with no English-speaking residents.

I've found another service that looks interesting, but I know of no one that has ever used it -- Called Everyone.  It is a service that allows you to record the message, and provide the phone number list of who to be called. If the lost dog's people have a good source of a lot of numbers -- maybe including cell phone nu;mbers? -- then this might be a good method for getting the word out to whoever might be seeing the dog. Or it can be used to request help in the search!

Shelters Naming Strays

If your goal as a pet detective is to help people find their missing dogs, one thing you can do is devote time to matching lost and found dogs virtually, using the internet. Lots of people do it; why not you?

There are countless websites on which lost dog ads are posted, Craigslist being probably the best local source. Other examples are Fido Finder, Find Toto, Lost My Doggie, Pets911, Petfinder Classifieds, and there are a ton more.

Then to find found dogs to match them to, many of the same sites also post found dogs. However, there are always fewer found dogs, partly because it's not that common for people to go to the effort of searching for a lost dog's owner, and because typically, a person who happens to be in a position to rescue an at large dog in need isn't necessarily in a position to foster that dog until the owner is found. So, finding shelter websites that post dogs is generally a good way to make matches. Pet Harbor is the best site I've found for this.

If you think that people don't need help finding their dog at the shelter, think again! Many people don't think of the shelter, don't check often enough, don't know how to check online. Then there's a problem that this guy ran into -- his dog was taken to a shelter that assigns names to stray dogs, from the time they are admitted. This guy may never have gotten his dog back if there wasn't someone to explain to him that his dog was the one on the Pet Harbor website that had been immediately given the name "Tangerine".

Camera Selection

Hmmmm .  .   .  it looks like I don't need to do that research I've always meant to do on cameras to be used in lost dog searches. Danielle Robertson has done some great research and posted it to her blog. at http://www.lostpetresearch.com/. So for now, I'm just going to refer you to that great article: 

             Online Resources for Selecting and Using a Trail Camera

Offering Help to Strangers

As people like me know, Craigslist is a great source if you are looking for people to help find their lost dog. It's probably THE best online source, and lots of people know it and advise people to use it. So, huge numbers of lost dogs are advertised on Craigslist.

But I, and many others I know, have experienced countless times that we offer help to strangers on Craigslist, and we don't hear back. This is always been true. I've come to understand it from doing my best to place myself in the shoes of people that post their lost dogs on Craigslist, but may otherwise have no experience with Craigslist and/or the dog loving community. I get that people get a LOT of emails with advice from well intended strangers -- so much that it's overwhelming, and in some cases, may actually interfere with the search. Or is perceived to do so.

The other day I departed from my normal procedure, and I DID send a brief email offering help. As is normal, I got no response. A couple of days later I was forwarded an email from one of my close friends that is involved with one of the many local homeless animal rescue organizations, which she always does since she knows I do lost dog recovery. It was from a friend of that dog's family, reaching out to rescue organizations asking if they've taken in a dog that looks like the friend's lost dog. So I emailed that family friend, let her know that I'd offered help to the family (or to whoever posted to Craigslist), and would she be so kind as to make sure the family knows that help is available if they want it.

I think that her response captured the essence of what people go through so well that I want to share it here. While it was all stuff that I already understood, I thought she put it well, and I figure there are lessons for others to learn here about approaching people that post their lost dogs on Craigslist:

Click the image for a larger view

Now, as for advising how to approach strangers so they will accept your offer of help -- that I still haven't figured out! I mostly get referred to by people that know what I do, and tell others. Without those referrals, I wouldn't be helping many people find their lost dogs.

Notifying Multiple First Responders

So you are fortunate enough that you have both sightings, and some depth in your volunteer base for responding to sightings. Or the family with the lost dog has friends, neighbors and extended family members that are ready to jump in and help. This is good!

But when a sighting comes in, if there are three people that you want to respond, or at least to notify to see if they can respond, you want to notify them all as quicky as possible. So here's a quick way if you have the sighting call taker at a computer.

For each first responder, collect the cell phone and their carrier name. Then determine the address at which you can send a short email from your email address that will be recieved as a text message by the first responder. I found the information by searching on "email to text"; plenty of resources came up. Here are the main providers, and what your emails would need to look like:

        Provider      Format
        Sprint           phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
        Verizon        phonenumber@vtext.com
        T-Mobile     phonenumber@tmomail.net
        AT&T           phonenumber@txt.att.net

So for example, if you have someone whose number is 800-555-1212 and their carrier is T-Mobile, then you email them at 8005551212@tmomail.net.

Obviously if you need to notify only one person of a hot sighting that you want them to respond to, this isn't a handy trick. But it works great if you have about 3 or more, and you have a computer to use to notify people. Even people that don't like to text back can at least read a text.

Give it a try the next time you have several people to notify that you have sighting calls to respond to.

Pictures for Large Posters

Obviously, fliers are a staple in lost dog searches. Everyone uses them, in all searches. Most commonly, people print them on an 8 1/2 " x 11" sheet of paper, and slap them on telephone poles.

Signs much larger than that are much, much more effective for spreading the word, needless to say. But they really raise the cost, and they take a lot of time to make if you cut costs by making them.

Then there's the problem of how to print pictures large enough. Well, check this out! It was just sent my way, and I tried it - it works great!

http://www.blockposters.com/

In this sample, I selected 2 pages, portrait, and US letter size. This basically means that my picture will be blown up such that 1/4 of the picture will print per page, which is already large enough that it will be a little blurry. But cars driving past from the distance they will be at, drivers should be able to see it.

         
Give it a try! Print large pictures for large signs that will be seen, and this should help spread the word!

Precautions When Using Cameras

Recently, a dog that I was involved in the search for was found, by sightings and by a search dog, to be traveling accross a small piece of property that happened to belong to the town. It was outside the fence of the public works building. There was a spot that was perfect for a feeding station, and we strapped one of our cameras to a tree.

The camera was there for close to a week before it disappeared.

Some days afterwards, we were emailed by a neighbor living near where the feeding station was. It seems that someone from the town had gone in search of the camera owner, to tell them they could come pick up their camera from the police department. That neighbor knew how to contact us.

So I called the officer, and I was surprised to have him tell me that he needed me to give him the make and mode, and preferably the serial number, of the camera before he would release it to me.

Well, our group has a number of different cameras, and I didn't have any idea what camera was out there. Fortunately, someone in our group did know which camera was there, and she had its twin at home. She did need that to look up the make and model, and from it she also got the format of the serial number, in case that would help.

So, the lessons are, one, don't forget, as we did in that case, to put identification on a camera (such as strepping a business card on to it, and keep a record of the make, model and serial numbers -- just in case your camera is appropriated by a municipality!

The Worst Thing About Coyotes

Obviously, a dog, or any pet, being killed in a coyote attack would be about the worst thing that could happen to a missing pet.

But if you talk to a lot of people that spend their time searching for missing pets, the message that they will put out is that people giving up the search for their missing pets because they assume that they were killed by a coyote is the worst thing you can do.  Coyotes don't account for anywhere near the amount of domestic animal kills that many people believe.

As a pet detective, one of the best ways you can assist missing pet owners is to advise them about coyotes, and to avoid placing an inordinate amount of stock in the idea that they have killed a dog or a cat, if they start talking about it. Here's a little reading on the subject:

Danielle Robertson discusses Trends in Coyote Attacks on Dogs in her blog.

One of the best succinct pages I've found on the subject is on the website of Carmen, a clairvoyant and a pet detective. Even if she is questionable as a source because of her status as a clairvoyant, she does a good job of putting the message out there: The Truth About Coyotes

Also read Digging for the Truth on Coyotes to get a little background on how scientists figure out that coyotes don't necessarily eat cats and small dogs as often as so many people believe.

Collecting Sighting Info

Often in a search for a lost dog, there are no, or few, sightings. And when the dog is actually out and about, as opposed to having been picked up, a lack of sightings can be very disheartening and depressing.

But then there are the cases with LOTS of sightings.

This tip is going to be valuable to only a fraction of individual lost dog owners who are currently searching for their lost dogs. But for the pet detective or lost dog recovery specialist, this gives you one more option to advise lost dog owners about if you are working a case with lots of sightings: Collect sighting information on an electronic form!

I haven't tried it yet, and in fact, I only just recently learned about free online form builders. And the first use I thought of related to searching for lost dogs is to collect sighting information. The first form building program I learned about was jotform.com, and I found some info on it on their Facebook page. So I suggest looking at that.

But since I really am not prepared to recommend one over the other, never having actually tried any of them, it seems that I should give equalt time to all of the programs I found quickly and easily with one quick internet search. So here are the websites I found, in no particular order other than alphabetical:

• http://www.emailmeform.com/
• http://www.formlogix.com/
• http://www.formsmarts.com/
• http://www.jotform.com/
• http://www.phpform.org/
• http://www.wufoo.com/
• http://www.zoho.com/

I'd love to hear how this works for anyone that tries it before I do. And I'd love to hear about other ideas for this kind of resource, in addition to the idea of collecting sighting info.

Surveillance Plans

A couple of nights ago, I ran a stake-out for the first time in a while, and this was after only participating in a few stake-outs before. Not that you know what I'd already learned, I'm going to share the new stuff I picked up.

One relates to establishing locations; one that we established turned out to be way too active. It was like Grand Central Station. There's a Dunkin Donuts and a Subway and a couple of restaurants. It probably would be a good location for an overnight stake-out, but this one ran from 8pm to midnight. We pulled it as soon as we figured it out, and reassigned the volunteers.

Another relates to deciding what volunteers are assigned to what locations. One volunteer has her own night vision, so we put her at one of two sites that was completely dark, with no street lighting. That was a good call. In another case, we got lucky when we paired two volunteers that were not interested in sharing a vehicle, but both stayed in their own cars, out of preference. We wanted the volunteers to help keep each other awake, so in general, this isn't preferable -- for them to be in separate cars. But at their site, it happens that one needed to watch the street and the other needed to watch the park, which are in opposite directions. So their cars faced opposite directions, and it worked.

We had neglected to instruct each volunteer team to study the areas surround each of the five surveillance sites, which they would need to know in case a sighting came in to one, since we would want all teams to move to the sighting area to assist. We got a volunteer to stay by the phone and computer so that she would be able to help navigate anyone that called her, in the event of a sighting, to the sighting location. Now, I would always want someone on standby for this reason.

We set up a phone tree in the event that a sighting came in. The first person to call would be the dog's foster mom, with whom she had bonded. Then the sighter would call the person on the list to which he was assigned. This would be the passenger/non-driver in another team. That person would call the person to whom they were assigned, which was the passenger in another team. This would continue until everyone was notified and would be on their way to the sighting locaiton. We tested this, and thankfully so since one person's phone number, on the list, was his home phone not his cell phone!

No, we never sighted the dog that night. But my consolation prize was figuring a few things out about stake-outs that I hadn't known  before.