Recovering your lost pet

Often finding your pet is not the same as recovering your pet. Dogs and cats that are panicked most likely will not come to the owner when called. Cats, in particular, get into areas that may be quite inaccessible to people. And dogs just keep moving away as we chase them through the area. Capturing a lost pet can be difficult and frustrating for the pet owner. When we get sightings, we can work to determine if your animal is remaining in the area and if there a pattern where the pet is eating, sleeping etc. If we can establish a habit area, we can better address the recovery of that pet.

Feeding and scent stations
A useful technique is to use feeding /scent stations to draw out a pet. To make a scent station use a towel or blanket that smells familiar to the lost pet. (Place the article in bed with another household pet or favorite person so that it smells like home.) Place that towel in the area where you believe your pet may be. Rake up the ground around the article or spread a thick layer of baking flour around it. This is so that you can see the tracks of any animal that may be visiting the station. Place some attractive smelling food on the towel. The scent station should be in a sheltered place where your pet will feel relatively safe visiting.

You may also consider opening a garage or outbuilding door and setting a station in there. You can set the station and then approach the area from various directions. We once tracked a tiny dog in the winter such that we could see his little dog prints where he followed the owner's prints made earlier that week while looking for his dog.

Owner
Another attractor, is the owner sitting and waiting for the pet to approach. This is like a stake out technique. It is useful when you have an animal that is afraid of most people but is very bonded to the owner. Once things settle and the pet has calmed down he/she may come to the owner. Have favorite treats and let your pet come to you. Call to him/her quietly and calmly.

One technique is to volunteers to walk around a contained area while the owners sits in the middle. We had such a case where the dog moved away from the walkers toward the owner until she got close enough to smell the cheese steak sandwiches they were waving around. After many sightings and chasing the dog all around town, the dog finally walked right up to the owner.

Family Pet
Bring a familiar pet on a leash or in a crate into the area in order to draw your lost pet close. Buck and I once recovered an Anatolian Shepherd this way. This big dog's long legs he just kept moving farther and farther away from us. Finally, I gave up chasing him we moved off at an angle in a last ditch attempt to intercept him. He finally saw his little daycare buddy and came to us where I could slip a leash over his head. (I’d like to say calmly slip the leash on but after that long run it would be hard to describe gasping for oxygen as calm.) This has worked for dogs that would not come close to a human. This has also worked for cats, though one needs to put the attractor cat safely in a carrier in order to reduce the risk of losing it also.

One word of caution. Even before we were officially helping people recover lost pets, Xena and I had a call out from a desperate GSD rescue in the area. They had a litter of feral puppies. One of the sisters had just been spayed when she bolted and ran into the woods. When we got there they told me they had brought the brother out to look for her. It worked she saw him and came close. When she did the brother panicked and backed out of his collar and ran off with his sister. Now we had to track two lost dogs not just the original one. We eventually recovered the brother with the use of a humane trap.

Humane trap
Humane traps can often be borrowed from shelters. There are a few different kinds of traps available. Placing the trap is an art essentially you want to locate it in an area where the animal is comfortable. Do not leave it in direct sun or exposed to cold wind. Place it in a sheltered area by a wall or brush. Wrap a blanket (preferably one that smells like home) around it. In some cases leave the back uncovered so it appears to be a tunnel not an enclosed area. You may need to cover the bottom of the inside if your pet will hesitate to walk on mesh. Make sure anything you place inside does not interfere with the trigger mechanism. Also do not leave animals in traps for any length of time especially if the weather is warm or cold! Check them frequently every hour or so or watch them from a distance. If you do not get results in a few days try moving the station a little distance. Sometimes it helps to start with food just outside the trap then move it inside.

If your cat is in the trap bring the whole thing in side a safe place (like your house.) before you open the door. your cat may be panicked and run away again. It is frustrating for the owners to have their pet back in their hands only to loose it again if it panics and runs away and now may be trap savvy meaning it will be even more difficult to trap because he/she will not enter the trap. We have recovered several pets that never would let a human get close enough to catch using the traps.

Feeding Station
A feeding station by a back porch in a back yard or in a garage. The directions were given in detail previously. Indoor only cats in particular when they get out may be very close to home but not responding to the owner. The feeding station will keep them in the area enabling you to eventually recover your pet. It may take weeks for this technique to work. Particularly when used in conjunction with a baby monitor or motion detecting camera the feeding stations can be a very successful tool.

Baby monitor / listening device
If the feeding/scent station is close to your house or someone’s house combine it with a baby monitor so you can hear when an animal is visiting it from inside the house. (Often people use these with babies you may be able to borrow one form friends or family who have older children that have outgrown the baby monitor. (be careful if you borrow one client discovered that they are not weather proof the hard way.) Place the monitor by the feeding station when you hear something eating simply check on it if it your missing pet invite him inside. Many cats have been recovered using this technique. If you have a particularly skittery dog but have narrowed down an area he is hiding in. Try placing the owner in the center of that area; use a large number of people surrounding the outside of the area moving gradually closer toward the middle, to drive the animal slowly toward the owner. If you are searching an area with lots of people it may be prudent to have “spotters” people placed around the outside of the area to watch that the pet is not flushed out of the area.

Be creative no one knows your pet like you do!

Successfully recovering lost pets is as much art and luck, as it is science. It may take weeks or months -- in some cases it takes years. Do not forget to take care of yourself. Missing meals or sleep will interfere with your ability to make rational decisions or do what needs to be done to recover your pet. Because recovering a lost pet may turn into a long-term project, you need to make time for family and work obligations as well. I tell people the first stage is very intensive. The first few hours and weeks are very time consuming and labor intensive. If you are searching for your pet for an extended period of time, you may then settle into a maintenance mode. This is where you update fliers and continue to follow up on sightings. You need to be aware that not all pets are recovered.

The sad truth is tha sometimes we just do not find out what happened to the pet. At a recent presentation with a group of human search and rescue volunteers we almost all had cases of lost humans who were never recovered. The recently very publicized Vivi case of the show dog that escaped from the airport in NYC was never resolved. However two years later and volunteers are still looking for her in the hopes she will resurface. Who knows... it has happened before!