Who You Gonna Call?

Lost a pet? Here are some solutions that can lead to a wonderful reunion

By Deb Acord
CTW Features

George Garcia was frantic. It was a Saturday night in May when he realized that Oliver, his Jack Russell terrier, was gone from his yard in Pueblo, Colo.

“I left the gate open, and I had taken his collar off. It was totally my fault,” Garcia says. He set out to look for the dog around his neighborhood – on foot and in his car. “I happened to see my cousin while I was out, and she gave me this number. She said to call right away.”

The phone number was for Amber Alert For Pets, a program organized to help frantic pet owners in Colorado. It’s an Internet-based association of pet owners, veterinarians and clinics, animal service groups, pet stores, groomers and pet sitters, kennel owners, and animal shelters, and it works as a network of eyes and ears. Volunteers post flyers and display posters, search neighborhoods, and actively keep an eye out for the pets that they are notified have gone missing.

When Oliver disappeared and Garcia called Amber Alert for Pets, he got Bill Rozich, a Pueblo resident who had started Amber Alert For Pets in September, 2006. Rozich told Garcia to move quickly, post a lost-dog item on the Amber Alert For Pets Web site (www.amberalertforpets.com) and blanket the area with lost pet posters. Oliver’s owner followed all the suggestions, and by the next night, Oliver and Garcia were reunited, the result of someone seeing the flyers.

“I couldn’t thank Bill enough,” Garcia says. “This guy’s compassion and his love of animals helped me find Oliver.”

Rozich’s love for Bobby, his own black Labrador retriever, is the reason he started Amber Alert For Pets.

He’d just moved to Colorado with Bobby and lost him when someone left the back gate open. “Have you ever tried looking for a Black Lab on a moonless night?” he writes on the Amber Alert For Pets Web site.

Rozich drove around most of the night and in the morning, contacted the local animal shelter, but without success. Eventually, he found Bobby safe and healthy, and in the process, he learned about search methods that work.

Today, the program has nearly 3,500 participants who register online, pay a one-time fee of $14.95 and pledge to actively look for lost pets posted in their neighborhoods or towns. Most subscribers willingly engage in the search knowing that in return others will do the same in their time of need.

Rozich realizes that “not everybody drops everything and goes out to look, but there are also people who do extraordinary things and constantly amaze me with their dedication.”

He remembers a woman in Broomfield, Colo., who “single-handedly got a yellow Lab home. She took the alert, printed flyers, sent e-mails to vets and visited other ones. She went through extraordinary lengths and got this dog found and got it home.”

Amber Alert For Pets operates along the Front Range of Colorado and occasionally reaches further. Recent posts on the site describe lost dogs and cats in Wisconsin, Oregon, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. Rozich says people from around the country are requesting it for their community. “We are trying to figure out a licensing program. We are a community-driven program, but we need somebody to run a program in each area.”

Losing a pet is traumatic for an owner, and it happens to the most conscientious of them. Dogs can be escape artists. Cats are opportunists. Even birds can take advantage of an open door or window. Petslostandfound.com, an Internet service, lists nearly 50,000 lost pets at any given time.

According to the Humane Society of the United States, animal shelters care for 6 to 8 million dogs and cats each year. Not all are lost – some are abandoned and some relinquished. But the HSUS has responded to owners searching for their pets with its own site, www.pets911.com.

The joyous reunion of a pet and its owner is what motivates Kat Albrecht. A former police detective who lives in the Fresno, Calif., area, Albrecht is the founder of Pet Hunters International, a missing-animal response service that trains pet detectives to conduct investigations to find lost pets.

Albrecht, author of “The Lost Pet Chronicles,” has trained about 100 people to be professional pet detectives since 2005. In 2008, she is launching a new course for volunteers around the country who might not want to present themselves as pros, but who want to be able to help people find lost pets.

Through Pet Finders, Albrecht is also setting up a program to help shelters develop pet finder programs. “Right now, their focus is picking up stray animals, but they aren’t making aggressive efforts or don’t have the resources to find the owners.”

When a dog makes it to a shelter, “the assumption is often made that nobody shows up to claim it because it’s unwanted,” Albrecht says. “But it could be the person who lost the dog is elderly, or physically handicapped, or out of town, or doesn’t speak English.”

Many of Albrecht’s techniques are simple. “For example, most cat owners who lose a cat post flyers.” But the most effective method is “to crawl on their belly under their neighbor’s house. That’s where they will find it.”

Like Amber Alert For Pets, Albrecht’s organization suggests posting signs – especially giant florescent ones at major intersections at commute times – and to offer a reward.

“As a searcher, you need to really get out there, and get out there fast. That’s the key to reuniting families with their pets,” Albrecht says.

Tips for searching for a lost pet, from HSUS:

1. Contact local animal shelters and animal control agencies.

2. Search your neighborhood.

3. Advertise at local businesses, offices, radio stations and newspapers.

4. Be wary of pet-recovery scams.

5. Don’t give up. Some animals lost for months are reunited with their owners.

Copyright © CTW Features

Comments	Date

Name:
Email:
Comments :