Photo by Dr. Teri Ann Oursler
Recently my friend lost her dog. A gate was accidentally left open and away the dog went. Not knowing what has happened to her dog has been hard for her to live with. She didn’t know if the dog was dead, alive and hurt somewhere, or in someone else’s house.
When we were talking about it, she said “If she's not dead, then it means someone out there thinks it's more important that they keep her for themselves than try to find me.” Her dog had some serious health issues (exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or EPI) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Depending on when my friend's dog is found after she went walkabout, the finders could believe she had been starving for a while because animals with these diseases can lose quite a bit of weight. What the finders of her underweight dog might not realize was that the dog was in excellent hands when cared for by her doting veterinarian owner, who kept the dog’s complex medical conditions in balance with a deft touch.
Pets get lost for numerous reasons, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with being dumped, abused, or neglected. According to the Missing Pet Partnership, the three main causes of lost animals are: an opportunistic journey (open gates and doors); wanderlust (the enduring lust of intact males causes them to try to sneak out like grounded teenagers); and blind panic (running from something scary and loud, like a thunderstorm or car accident). Not dumped, not unwanted, not tossed out the door.
Accidents happen to everyone. I once let two of my dogs out in the middle of the night to take care of their business. Unbeknownst to me, a gate post had broken off in the windstorm and one of my gates was down. I drove around in the middle of the night calling and looking for them, but they finally came back home. Another time my family was on our way to camping in the mountains and we were making a quick potty stop. One minute the dogs were there, the next they were gone – in unknown mountain territory. I was sure I would never see them again and the thought was sickening. Two insanely long hours later, they returned, muddy and grinning. They had been off having a great time, while I was hoarse from calling them and tired from worrying.
While I was in practice, people would bring in dogs or cats that they had found. If the pet was skinny, dirty, unkempt, or shy, they would automatically assume the animal had been abused or neglected and should not be returned to its purportedly horrible owner. In more than 19 years of practice, I NEVER saw a case where this was true. Experience taught me that even if the pet has a microchip, some finders refuse to contact the owner because they assume the pet is better off elsewhere since it was in such a sorry state when found.
Consider the sheltie who belonged to one of my clients. She got out of a gate that was blown open in yet another Wyoming windstorm (yes, there is a pattern here). It took three months for this sheltie to be caught and she had lived down near the river in an area called the dog ponds for all of those months. She was scared and refused to come to anyone, including the owner and his family. When she was finally found, you can only imagine what the sheltie’s beautiful long coat looked like after living in the woods for that long. Thankfully it was the owner’s trap that finally caught her, as anyone looking at that dog with her filthy, matted coat would think she had been abused and left to starve. Once she was back at home, she went back to being her friendly self, never missing a beat in enjoying people. She was really glad to be back with her family.
The sheltie’s situation is not unusual, but much depends on who finds the animal. “People who find stray dogs often misinterpret the dog's behavior; they assume that the cowering, fearful dog was ‘abused’ when in fact the dog has a xenophobic temperament and has been shy and fearful since it was a puppy, due to genetics and puppyhood experiences,” states the Missing Dog Partnership on their website. “Dogs found in rural areas are often assumed to be ‘dumped’ and homeless; many rescuers never think this could be a dog that was lost. Some people who find a stray dog that does not have a collar automatically assume it is ‘homeless’ and therefore they immediately work to place the dog rather than attempt to find the dog's owner. In addition, the first place the owner of a lost dog will search for his or her dog - the local shelter - is typically the last place that someone who finds a loose dog will take it (due to the fear of euthanasia)!”
Last winter my friends and I found a Shih Tzu (or maybe it was a Lhasa) on the highway. He was well groomed, and had a collar but no tags. Thankfully, the owners checked the shelter where I’d taken him, near where he was lost, and they were reunited within hours. It certainly could have gone differently. I wish I knew why he didn’t have any tags on. Did they fall off on their cross-country trip? Was he wearing two collars and slipped one? Had they taken his collar off just prior to his running off (he had gotten scared when they stopped for coffee)? Had I just presumed that they were bad owners and kept him, I would have caused much pain and loss for people who loved their dog. As Yoda would say, “Your eyes can deceive you.” There is always more to the story and we need to give the benefit of the doubt to our fellow human beings. After all, most people are good people. To quote Missing Pet Partnership, “In order for most of the loose (found) dogs to be unwanted (dumped or abandoned), we'd need to have hoards of people lining up every day just to dump all of these dogs!”
It is our duty, as pet loving folks, to consider the person and family behind the lost animal in front of us. We should not presume that a collarless, unkempt dog or cat is abandoned or abused, but instead we should consider that sometimes excrement happens and the pet was lost through no fault of the owner. We should all believe that likely there are heartbroken owners looking for their missing pet, perhaps with hysterical children tugging at them. Because it succinctly sums up my own feelings, I’m adopting the Missing Pet Partnership’s slogan from their campaign to educate people about how to respond to unaccompanied pets: “Think LOST, not stray.”
So what should we do when we find a lost animal, who may or may not be skinny, dirty, scared, hand shy, or have a collar or tags?
- Take the animal to the local shelter and law enforcement.
- Put up found fliers, preferably with a picture. Bright neon-colored posters are the most visible.
- Call and report your find to the veterinary clinics in the area.
- Have the pet scanned for a microchip by your veterinarian or shelter and contact the registered owner.
- Post a picture on Facebook.
If you find a dog or cat, please do what you can to get them back to the owner regardless of how bad they look; the disheveled state they are in seldom reflects their true home circumstances. You will make the pet and the family happy. What great good you can do by reuniting a family with their beloved lost pet! And, after all, isn't that how you would like to be treated?
17 Comments
Charlotte
November 15, 2015
Therese
November 12, 2015
AM
November 11, 2015
Wendy Smith Wilson, DVM
November 11, 2015
Ellen
November 11, 2015
Susan
November 11, 2015
Rhonda Bowman
October 15, 2015
Christy Corp-Minamiji, DVM
October 15, 2015
Pet Lover
October 14, 2015
Jeri
October 14, 2015
Rita Rice
October 14, 2015
A Rescuer
October 14, 2015
Mo
October 9, 2015
Holly
June 1, 2014
Teri Ann Oursler, DVM
May 20, 2014
Melissa
May 20, 2014