Lost & Found: How Social Media is Helping Reunite Lost Pets with Their Families
January 22, 2012 in Newsletter by Jillian at Tails
When the family pet is lost, people are often left scrambling to get help—calling local rescues, animal shelters, neighbors and friends, putting up flyers, and going door-to-door. It can be exhausting and time-consuming. If a pet is microchipped it can certainly help make the search easier, but getting the word out initially can be a daunting task.
That is why rescue groups and animal health care professionals like Tennessee-based veterinary assistant Andrew Proffitt have been creating Facebook pages to reunite lost pets with their people parents. Lost and Found Pets of the Tri-Cities has been active for about six months now and has about 1100 fans.
“This is a centralized way to kind of cut down on the amount of time a person can spend exhausting energy and power in what can be an upsetting situation. This is part of the veterinary business that goes unseen—the amount of people who go for weeks and months searching for that pet that they love,” Proffitt said.
Who can forget the commercial about the little girl that lost her dog Sarah? Remember how everyone used their cell phones and social connections to reunite the little girl and her beloved Sarah? This is a perfect example of how our evolving technologies are helping speed up rescue time and reunite pets and families:
If you ever find a lost pet, make sure to contact your local rescue groups and animal shelters, as well as spreading the word on your social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, etc. The quicker the word gets out, the faster distraught families and lost pets can be together again.
Are pet lovers uniting in a unique way to find lost pets in your area? We’d love to hear about it! Post your stories in the comment section below!
Sarah Sypniewski said on January 27, 2012
Bravo! I run a lost dog logistics and recovery service called NinjaDog Concepts, and I can’t tell you how much I agree with this article. And how wonderful that some vet offices take this task on! I wanted to share a few resources:
http://www.facebook.com/ninjadogconcepts – feel free to post missing pets there.
http://issuu.com/pawsh_magazine/docs/pawsh_winter_2012jan25 – see page 34 for an article I wrote entitled, “What to Do If Your Dog Gets Lost.” It just came out on Tuesday.
My fave two sites are http://www.missingpetpartnership.org and http://www.lostdogsearch.com
Great article! The more you know…
Cori's mom said on January 27, 2012
There’s a great new completely free service called http://MissingCritters.com. With your smartphone, just snap a photo of the animal you either lost or have found and send it to the Missing Critters database. Owner and finder can then connect, and the reunion can happen just as soon as they make arrangements. If they want to meet at a safe, public place such as a shelter, it’s up to them, but the pet will not have to be admitted to a shelter.
Jill Moody said on January 27, 2012
This is the Arkansas Lost and Found Pet Network on FB. It is great for reuniting lost fur babies.
Jill Moody said on January 27, 2012
This is the Arkansas Lost and Found Network on FB. It is a great site to reunite lost fur babies.
Sue said on January 27, 2012
Lost Dogs Illinois and Lost Dogs of Wisconsin are extremely active Facebook pages that have over 15,000 fans combined. Between the 2 groups, 1252 dogs were reunited with their families in 2011 (1183 safely, 60 deceased, per their Facebook posts).
http://www.facebook.com/LostDogsIllinois
http://www.facebook.com/findfido
That is a lot of dogs to have been kept out of animal control facilities and shelters, and back home with their families!
Jillian at Tails said on January 27, 2012
Thanks so much for sharing these resources! We have liked them!
Susan Taney said on January 27, 2012
I would like to share our Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/lostdogsillinois. We have over 7500 fans and over 700 dogs were reunited our first year. We provide tools and resources to assist owners of lost dogs and also finders of “stray” dogs. With 50-70% of shelters animals being “strays” and only 15-20% of animals being returned to owners, there is a definite need to educate the public on who to find their lost dogs. The more dogs that are reunited with their owners the more room is available in shelters for truly homeless dogs and it also decreases euthanasia. Keep up the good work Lost and Found Pets of the Tri Cities!