The first hours following your pet’s disappearance might be crucial to find it back. There are several methods that can be combined as to enhance exposure and improve the chances of finding your pet. The main rule is to never give up and always pay attention.

The easiest and most immediate way of reuniting a pet back with its owner is through an identifying plate, which you should place on your pet’s collar. It should have the owner’s name written on it, together with a phone number or address and the name of the pet. This plate or the collar, however, are subject to fall, hence the microchip is the only viable way of identifying the animal. This microchip is recognized through a number that is associated to your personal date on a data base. If the person who finds your pet has the number of the microchip checked, they can easily find you and get in touch. The microchip data can be checked by a vet. Since this number is the only way to prove that the animal is yours, you should never let anyone else know it.

Ways to find your pet

Search around the house

Pets often get trapped inside the house, whether behind the furniture or domestic devices, or even outside the house, in holes and fences. Search meticulously inside the house and around the property in case you have one.


Search the neighbourhood

Seek any answer you can from your neighbours, asking them if they have possibly seen your pet and let them keep your telephone number for them to call you in case they find it. Do not feel embarrassed to be out in the street calling your pet’s name. If your dog or cat is close enough to hear you they most probably will come to you.


Print and affix posters

If your first searches don’t succeed, have your pet’s picture printed into posters, using the most current picture possible for this. Have your contacts printed on them as well and stick them up in poles, stores and veterinarian clinics around your area. Appeal for your sentimental side and let everyone know how much you and your family miss your beloved pet.


Use the internet

You can find many groups of animal lovers on the internet, who gather in online communities and usually pay attention to these situations. Make an announcement on animal forums, telling them that you have lost your pet and letting your contacts written down. Here you should include your e-mail address as well because many people prefer not to spend money on calls or don’t feel at ease to call strangers in case they see your pet late at night.
And since you are logged on the internet, also search for sites where you can find lost/abandoned animals that have been found.


Reach out for animal organizations and kennels

Street animals are often collected and delivered to kennels or animal organizations. In both places there is usually a careful search for a microchip on the dog/cat, but sometimes the information found does not come out or the data in the microchip is no longer valid.

It is quite important that you deliver a poster or photos of your pet in kennels and animal organizations because people often don’t relate the animal to your verbal description of it. Besides, a picture always helps to better remember the appeal.


Media

Reach to your local radio stations and place an ad in the newspaper. Also look for your pet in newspapers where lost/found animal ads are published.


Offer a reward

If you believe someone stole your pet or collected it and kept it, offer some kind of reward in the posters you put up. When money is offered, many animals are given back, even after having been stolen.


Act immediately

As soon as you are given a hint of where your pet was seen, you should go to that place right away or, in case you really can’t, ask someone to do it for you. Animals can walk several miles a day and might significantly move away from where it is.


Don’t give up

Some people find their pets after months of searching. There are even stories of pets, especially cats, that came back home several months after disappearing. Keep searching for your pet around your neighbourhood.