Think Lost, Not Stray!

This post is one for when you really have the time to invest in learning about the Missing Pet Partnership's "Think Lost, Not Stray!" message. It's an important message, and if you are helping people find their missing pets, you should know all about it.

This presentation runs almost 1 1/2 hours; it was presented by Kat Albrecht at a Best Friends conference in 2009. Below the link to the conference, I'm providing the outline for a significant part of the presentation. My next blog entry will present the remainder of it -- the comparative analysis of lost pet/lost person searches

Click to start the presentation whenever you are ready, and you can follow below in a separate window if you want:  http://www.bestfriends.org/recordings/thinklostnotstray/index.html

Missing Pet Partnership Copyright © 2009

THINK LOST, NOT STRAY!

Presenter: Kathy “Kat” Albrecht

Founder, Missing Pet Partnership

www.missingpetpartnership.org

E-mail: kat@pethunters.com

Every dog and cat that escapes from the care of its guardian is a "stray" that contributes to the overcrowding of our shelters. A great majority of the stray dogs that end up in shelters were not born in the wild nor were they living in wild packs. Most escaped from a home where they were cared for by someone who simply failed to keep the animal contained. You’ll learn how behaviors contribute to drastically low RTO rates of shelter cats and how shelters can reduce euthanasia rates of unclaimed strays (dogs and cats) through innovative lost animal services, education, and prevention techniques.

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Brief History / Background

B. Why Lost Pets? (Industry focus is currently on spay/neuter and forever home adoptions. Sadly, there’s very little effort invested in returning lost companion animals to their original homes)

II. WHAT IS A “STRAY?”

A. To wander about without a destination or purpose; to be loose and roaming.

1. A stray dog or cat DOES NOT mean it is a “homeless” animal or an animal without a guardian…it simply is a companion animal who has escaped custody of his caregiver.

B. STRAY DOGS: In most cases, a stray dog is a missing/lost dog that has not yet be found by his guardian.

C. STRAY CATS: A stray cat can be an untamed feral cat, an escaped house cat, or a displaced cat whose guardian is not known. All three categories can exhibit the same “feral like” behavior (hissing, spitting, growing, twirling in case). Sadly, mistakes on determining whether a cat is “feral” vs. a panicked domesticated cat are common (ZEKE story + VIDEO)

III. WHY ARE SO MANY STRAYS UNCLAIMED?

A. Lack of a Central Clearinghouse (see “Lost Pet / Lost Person Comparative Analysis” handout)

B. Shelter logistics (hours, location)

C. Shelter policies (fine involved, must come down to shelter)

D. Physical limitations (disabled, elderly, no transportation)

E. Emotional limitations (grief avoidance, shelter phobic, hopeless)

F. Discouragement (from untrained professionals)

G. Cultural limitations (language barriers, cultural ignorance, fear of uniforms)

H. Searching at wrong location (multiple shelters, timing of the entry into the shelter)

I. Human and animal behaviors are a major contributing factor to permanent the displacement of lost companion animals! (Refer to “The Lost Pet Triad”)

J. Tunnel Vision (cat owner believed animal communicator instead of standard search advice – even with previous experience of a cat taken to a shelter!)

K. Expecting grieving, broken-hearted people who have no hope to continue a sustained search effort without offering assistance contributes to high euthanasia rates!

IV. WHAT FACTORS INHIBIT THE RECOVERY OF LOST COMPANION ANIMALS?

A. The moment a dog or cat escapes from his guardian’s care, the terminology used for that animal and how people (rescuers) respond to that animal DRASTICALLY CHANGE

B. Vernacular used by rescuers (“I found a dumped stray” instead of “I found a lost dog”) influences their behavior and ultimately what happens to the dog (i.e. re-homed with no efforts to re-unite)

C. Lost companion animals viewed as “sad” by shelters but not as a serious contributing factor to the amount of unclaimed strays they hold in their cages and then euthanize

D. Pet Detectives viewed with suspicion or as a joke (or not even heard of at all)

E. THE FIRST PLACE that guardians are told to “search” for their lost dog or cat is typically THE LAST PLACE where a found dog or cat will be taken (i.e. the city pound). Compare this to lost/found people (central clearinghouse called “9-1-1”).

F. Cats that are panicked, sick, or injured will hide in silence (behavior called “The Silence Factor”) to protect themselves from predators. These cats will not be found by their guardians unless they physically search their neighbor’s yards and/or utilize baited humane traps. The fact that these specific techniques are rarely taken contributes to low reclaim (and high euthanasia) rates of stray cats in our shelters.

G. What a rescuer THINKS and BELIEVES about a found dog or cat influences HOW THEY BEHAVE and WHAT ACTION THEY WILL OR WON’T TAKE. We make “implicit associations” and make snap decisions automatically based on what we have been led to believe such as this dog was dumped or this skittish cat is feral (see “Think Lost, Not Stray” handout).

V. MISSING ANIMAL RESPONSE SERVICES TO INCREASE REUNIONS

A. Physical Searches by professionals (MAR Technicians) with trained search dogs, hightech

equipment, and training in how to solve investigations

B. Lost Dog Protests using volunteers with LOST DOG signs near escape point (VIDEO)

C. Reverse investigation/efforts (posting giant FOUND DOG florescent flyers, interviewing

neighbors) by volunteers to solve the mystery of WHO LOST THIS (caged) DOG?

D. Tagging vehicle windows (see photo example at www.missingpetpartnership.org home

page slide show) to mass market a lost dog

E. Refer Guardians to lost pet resources

1. www.missingpetpartnership.org – species specific lost pet recovery tips and network of trained volunteer and professional lost pet recovery resources

2. www.craigslist.com – social network for posting lost/found pets

3. www.petfinder.com (sustained search for ADOPTABLE DOGS weeks or months after escape)

4. www.petharbor.com, www.pets911.com, www.dogdetective.com, etc, etc.

VI. PREVENTING LOST COMPANION ANIMAL ENTRY INTO SHELTERS

A. Microchip / Tag / Containment System Education

1. Cat Fence In Products – Coyote Rollers

2. Most obvious and common effort

B. Referral to Pet Detective Services and Web sites

1. www.missingpetpartnership.org – national directory of pet detectives and behavior/species specific recovery tips

2. Testimonials (SUHKI CASE / ODIE CASE)

C. Establish a Volunteer Trap-and-Reunite (TAR) Program

1. Displaced cats do NOT “run away” – they hide in silence (often near their escape point)

2. Volunteers use humane traps, baby monitors, and surveillance methods to recover “lost” cats who are hiding

3. If not captured, these cats ultimately end up in feral cats colonies or shelters (months later, long after family has stopped searching)

4. The failure of cat owners to recover their displaced cats IS A MAJOR REASON WHY OUR NATIONAL RTO RATES FOR CATS ARE DISMALLY LOW (2%)

D. Lost Pet Search-and-Rescue Teams

1. Physical searches for lost companion animals (service fee or to foster new donors)

2. Proper Posters (ODIE CASE)

3. Counseling/assistance (even transportation) for those who have lost an animal

4. Shelter Cross checks (volunteers in distant communities)

5. LOST DOG protests

6. Network of Taggers to mass market lost dogs

7. Craig’s List and other web site cross checks

8. Night Patrols to recover displaced cats (requires a car, a spotlight, and someone who loves cats!)

E. Missing Pet Partnership’s Vision for the Future

1. MPP will rescue dogs from shelters, train them to locate lost pets, and issue them to partnering shelters and rescue groups

2. Through partnerships, MPP will facilitate the development of volunteer Missing Animal Response teams in communities across the USA

3. Ten years from now, guardians will know they can call on resources that include professionally trained volunteers and search dogs to help them search for their lost pets

4. The reality, however, is that this vision will take TIME and FUNDING. Please support Missing Pet Partnership. Visit our web site and become a MEMBER!

VII. CONCLUSION

Experience has shown that there are many reasons why people fail to show up at their local shelter in time to claim their lost animals. So what would happen if shelters referred guardians to reliable lost pet recovery services? What would happen if shelters developed a program where volunteers did everything within their power to find the guardians of stray dogs and cats within the 72-hour holding period? What if instead of passively waiting for a lost dog or cat to show up in the local shelter, volunteers and guardians went into the community and aggressively searched for lost dogs and cats?

How much would shelter euthanasia levels drop and how high would return-to-owner rates soar if instead of immediately looking for “forever homes” for strays, we instead slowed down and worked to find the “original home” where that dog or cat escaped from? The answer is that we will never know until we try!

Here is a PDF of the presentation:
http://bestfriends.s3.amazonaws.com/nmhpconf/2009/ThinkLostNotStray1.pdf

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.