minister- misty
be calm, dont- worry!
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 | | Barked: Thu Oct 11, '07 1:13am PST | |  | |  | | From Purina Petcentrics
Safe at Home
You may be the love of your dog’s life and the center of his world, but he still has his own instincts, desires and fears that can cause him to run off with reckless abandon. There is no way to completely prevent losing your dog, but there are ways to reduce the odds, and increase the probability of him getting back home.
Even a dog that stays at home or in the backyard with a six-foot privacy fence can get out and become lost. A dog at home can slip through a door left open, nudge through a loose board in a fence, stroll through a gate accidentally left open, or dig under the fence. A dog that goes places with you, can also take off, even if you are careful to keep him on a leash. Since you can’t focus 100% on your dog 100% of the time, there’s always a chance that you’ll become distracted, loosen your grip on the leash, a squirrel runs by and your dog takes off, dragging the leash behind him.
You can prevent escapes from home and yard by making sure screen doors are latched, family members keep in the habit of closing doors and gates, picking up your dog or holding his collar (depending on his size) anytime someone comes to the door. Once in a while, survey your own yard. Check board by board on your fence to see if any are loose and repair them. Check for areas where your dog may be digging near the fence – fill and block the hole (and give your dog more stimulation and exercise – he may be bored).
But because life, dogs and people are unpredictable, you have to be prepared in case your dog does get lost. Here are some basic things you need to do:
Your dog should always wear an ID tag. The tag should, at minimum, have your current phone number. There are also more high-tech tags available that provide more info. A collar and tag are a clear communication that this is someone’s pet, not a stray. That alone could mean the difference between your dog being kept by the finder or given back to you.
Microchip your dog! This is a simple procedure done by your veterinarian. A chip the size of a grain of rice is injected between your dog’s shoulder blades. This is like DNA – only quicker. It positively identifies your dog. If your dog slips out of his collar, he hasn’t lost his identity. Most shelters and veterinarian’s offices can scan the chip and identify whom he belongs to. If someone claims your dog as his or her own, the chip provides proof positive that he’s yours.
Register the chip number. A microchip will do no good unless it is registered to you. Go to HomeAgain.com to learn about registering. HomeAgain also provides many services to help you find your dog, such as sending out lost pet alerts to veterinary clinics and shelters in your area.
Remember, if your dog should get away, the most probable scenario is that someone has found him. The best thing you can do to make sure your dog is returned to you, rather than being taken in by another dog lover or turned over to a shelter, is to make sure it’s abundantly clear that he belongs to you.
Hiding Out
When you realize your kitty is missing, your fear is that she’s lost or has run away. The reality is, according to pet detective Kat Albrecht, author of The Lost Pet Chronicles and founder of Missing Pet Partnership, cats don’t run away. They hide. The good news is, most cats are found within a 2 – 3 house radius of their own home.
The way you go about searching for your missing cat, and the level of alarm you should feel, depends upon whether you have an indoor cat who has escaped, or an outdoor cat who didn’t show up for dinner. You may be surprised to learn that it’s the indoor cat that is in less danger and will be easier to find. According to Kat, the outdoor cat is the one in trouble. This article will take you through the steps Missing Pet Partnership advises for finding an indoor cat. Following this story you'll find a link to their advice on helping increase your chances of finding your outdoor kitty.
If your indoor cat slips out the door or open window, she probably left out of curiosity or bolted in fear. In either case, as soon as she found herself outside, she realized she was out of her own territory. That is very unsettling and terrifying to a cat. Her instincts tell her to lay low and hide. She will not run out into the open, but will hug the walls of your house, crawl under bushes, slink along a wooden fence, dive under a porch. It is unlikely she will go far before she is gripped by terror and will settle into some small space to hide. She will stay there where she feels safe.
Even though your cat hears you call her name, may see you looking for her, and she knows you are her source of love, comfort and food, she is hiding in silence because she is afraid and her instincts tell her to stay put. After several days of hiding and she gets hungry enough, she will slip out in the night, find food, and return to hiding.
Knowing that, here is how Kat recommends searching for your indoor kitty:
Stay calm. Realize that your cat is not lost, she is hiding. And she’s not going to meow.
Determine the escape point. Search all hiding places near it.
This may sound strange, but set humane traps. A humane raccoon trap is ideal for trapping your own cat. It’s a wire cage that you bait with food. When your kitty comes out of hiding at night to feed, she’ll enter the cage. It closes behind her, safely containing her. Traps should be set daily. Go to www.catsinthebag.org for information on setting humane traps. Some shelters and veterinarians rent them, or you can buy them at a hardware store.
Check the animal shelters every three days. File a lost pet report there. Your indoor cat may not end up at a shelter for a few months.
Buy large florescent poster board and make REWARD: LOST CAT signs to post in your neighborhood, within a half mile of your home. Use a photo, a 2-3 word description (BLACK, WHITE PAWS) and your phone number.
Make lost cat flyers to pass out door to door in your neighborhood.
If you can't find your cat right away consider going to Missing Pet Partnership to find a pet detective in your area.
Cats hide extremely well and can hold out for a very long time. Eventually, as your cat goes in and out of hiding, and she leaves her scent in places, she will establish a territory. She may get absorbed into a feral cat colony and start a new life there. Someone may find and keep her or take her to a shelter, or a cat rescue group may find her. You have to be patient and keep looking! It can take months to find a lost kitty.
Finding a Missing Outdoor Cat
If you have a cat who comes and goes as he pleases and doesn’t show up for dinner one evening, don’t just assume he’s off having an adventure and will return when he’s ready. If he’s not there when he usually comes home, you may have a kitty emergency on your hands.
“Outdoor cats don’t get lost or run away,” Kat Albrecht says. “They don’t leave their territory voluntarily. So if your outdoor cat doesn’t come home it’s because something has happened to interrupt his normal behavior patterns.”
She emphasizes that the moment you realize your cat should be home and he’s not, you should be alarmed and act immediately.
What could’ve happened to him? Here are just a few of the probabilities Kat has profiled:
Theft or rescue. Someone liked your cat and kept him or thought he was a stray and took him to a shelter.
Illness or injury. He may be hiding in silence, unable to come home.
Displacement. He could have been chased out of his territory by a person, dog or bigger cat. Outside of his territory, he’ll be frightened and will instinctively hide in silence, probably within a few blocks of your home.
Trapped. He could’ve crawled into someone’s basement window, gone into a shed that was shut and locked, got stuck in a tree or thorn bush and is unable to free himself.
Unintentional transport. Cats sometimes climb into open car windows, or jump into parked moving vans and are unintentionally transported across town or across the country.
Because anything could’ve happened, the quicker you start looking, the more likely you are to find him, and possibly save his life.
What to do when your outdoor cat is missing:
Realize that something has happened to your cat.
Immediately search your own property, looking under and in everything. Consider that he may be injured or trapped. He won’t meow.
Obtain permission from your neighbors to search their property, especially properties where you know your cat has spent time. Be very thorough. He can hide in very small, obscure places.
The same day, check your local shelters, in case he was taken there by animal control. File a lost pet report at the shelters.
Buy large florescent poster board and make REWARD: LOST CAT signs to post in your neighborhood, within a half mile of your home. Use a photo, a 2-3 word description (CALICO, LONG HAIR) and your phone number.
Make LOST CAT flyers to pass out door to door in your neighborhood.
Place an ad in the paper.
Expand your search a few blocks or miles.
Check with cat rescue groups.
Check your shelter every three days.
Don’t give up.
“The most important thing to remember is don’t give up,” says Kat. “ Your cat is out there. He didn’t vaporize.”
Because there are so many possibilities for a cat to be alive and well someplace, either at someone’s house, in a feral cat colony, in another state – found in a piece of furniture after someone moved, at a no-kill shelter…you just have to be vigilant and exhaust all possibilities before giving up hope. Kat recommends searching for at least three-months – your time will be well-spent if and when you find your beloved cat.
Pet Detectives
Dogs are well known to use their noses to sniff out lost people, hidden bombs, illegal drugs and stolen cash. But, now it’s possible to enlist the service of trained dogs to find your lost dog or cat!
Kat Albrecht, a former police officer who worked with dogs to search for missing people, lost her own scent hound one day, and sent another dog to find him. This made her wonder why no one ever trained dogs to find lost pets. And why there aren’t any pet detectives.
Over many years, Kat documented lost cat and dog cases and was able to discover common behaviors and patterns. She pioneered the field of pet detection, founded Missing Pet Partnership and wrote The Lost Pet Chronicles . Her experience taught her how and where to look for missing pets, depending on whether it’s a cat or dog. Missing cats and missing dogs have completely different behavior patterns. Especially if they are frightened, dogs run and cats hide.
So if your dog were missing, you could call a certified pet detective like Kat and she’d ask you a lot of questions about your particular dog. Your dog’s size, breed, temperament and why he ran off help determine how and where to search. For example, a small lap dog is not going to get very far before someone thinks he’s too cute and picks him up. A large dog is more likely to wander further because fewer people will approach a big dog. If your dog is a mixed breed or skittish, he may wander further or be turned in as a stray. If your dog took off after a rabbit, the search would be different from if he ran off in terror because something scared him.
The pet detective would bring a trailing dog to sniff your pet’s bedding or other item with his scent. The dog gives it a good sniff and takes off looking for your pooch. A good trailing dog will travel the exact path of your dog, which may go for miles. This method has saved many a dog’s life because sometimes the dog has not returned home because he’s injured or trapped and would otherwise never have been found. The trailing dog can also lead to the place where someone picked up your dog. Where the scent trail ends, is where more questions begin. This is where someone may have seen who rescued your dog.
If your cat were missing, you could call a pet detective with a cat detection dog. These are dogs who love cats (in a good way!) and love to find them. The pet detective will first ask if it’s an indoor or outdoor cat (see Hiding Out) and tell the dog to “find the kitty.” Since cats are usually found within a 2 – 3 house radius of their own home, often a good cat detection dog can find your kitty within minutes. Because so many missing cats are either hiding, trapped or injured, often a trained dog is the fastest way to find your kitty.
You can find a pet detective in your area by going to Missing Pet Partnership. This is a new field, so there are not nearly enough trained and certified pet detectives to handle all the pets that become lost each year. It is Kat’s hope that more dog owners will learn the techniques and teach their own dogs to be pet finders, and provide the service to their communities. Not every lost pet story has a happy ending, but the ones that end up with the pet being reunited with his owner bring tremendous joy and a great sense of accomplishment for both the pet detective and the scent dog. (Just watch this happy reunion!)
Video:
http://www.pethunter.presskit247.com/EDocs/Site64/DogwithJob.mov
Whose Pet?
The fate of lost pets, especially dogs, is often in the hands of the people who find them. And sometimes it's the most good-hearted, well-meaning, pet-loving people who inadvertently prevent a lost dog or cat from getting home. This is because we make some false assumptions about the pets and their owners.
Many people assume that a dog wandering loose, without a collar, is a stray, and they’ll either ignore him, keep him or call animal control. If a dog wearing a collar is dirty, injured, cowers in fear, or is scrawny, people assume he’s been mistreated and may rescue him from his bad owner.
The truth is, dogs get separated from their owners for many reasons. Dogs can slip out of their collars. Dogs that are well loved may be anxious around strangers and cower in fear. A dog who has been lost for a long time may have become dirty, injured or scrawny during his misadventures away from home.
When people see a strange cat outside, people assume it’s either a stray or someone’s outdoor kitty. Cats are often ignored or taken in by the people who find them.
Pet detective Kat Albrecht, founder of Missing Pet Partnership has dealt with hundreds of missing pet cases. Her advice is, “When you find a dog or cat, assume that it is loved and wanted, and work toward reuniting that animal with its owner.” Kat’s motto is: “Think lost, not stray.”
So, when you see a dog wandering loose, here are ways to reunite him with his owner:
Check his tags. If he doesn’t have an ID, his rabies tag could lead you to his owner.
Walk him around the area where you found him. His owner may spot him.
Take the dog to a veterinarian or local shelter to see if he has a microchip, which would identify the owner. If you are concerned about leaving the dog at a shelter, ask if you can foster him until the owner is found. By law, you have to turn in a found dog, so if the shelter won’t allow you to foster him, come back in three days and adopt him yourself.
Take a picture of the dog and make large FOUND DOG posters to place in the area where you found him.
Place a FOUND DOG ad in the classifieds and on lost pet web sites. Read LOST DOG ads from area papers.
If you find a wandering cat, she could be feral or someone’s outdoor cat. She could have been missing for so long, she became feral. If you see a cat hiding, she could be a neighbor’s indoor cat that got out. Either way, consider the possibility that the cat belongs to someone, who may have been searching for weeks or months and would love to have their kitty back. So…
Take a picture of the cat, if possible, and post a FOUND CAT poster in the neighborhood.
Look in the paper and on web sites for lost cats.
Contact local shelters and ask if anyone has reported the cat missing.
Set a humane trap if the cat won’t let you near her.
Place a FOUND CAT ad in your local paper.
Take as much time and effort to find the pet’s owner as you would want someone to spend finding you if your pet were lost. Pet owners need to stick together!
Teaching Your Dog to Find Lost Pets
If you want to spend some quality, meaningful time with your dog, give him a great sense of purpose and serve your community, consider training your dog to sniff out lost pets. Your dog doesn’t have to be a Bloodhound or a purebred. Any type of dog, large or small, can become a pet detective if he has the right temperament and drive.
There are three types of pet-finding dogs – trailing dogs who search for lost dogs, cat detection dogs who look for lost kitties, and dual-purpose dogs who have the ability to do both.
Kat Albrecht, author Dog Detectives: How to Train Your Dog to Find Lost Pets says dogs tend to self-select which type of work they’ll do. Some dogs really love cats and are thrilled to “find the kitty.” About one out of every 14 dogs passes her cat test. Dogs who are afraid of cats or like to torment them are better off finding their own kind. And some dogs do both jobs equally well.
Dogs are taught to find lost pets by playing hide and seek. To the dog, it’s all a fun game with a reward at the end. A “target cat” or “target dog” is hidden, and the search dog tries to find him – the reward is getting to play with the found pet.
You and your dog can team up and learn the skills needed to become a pet detective team and help people in your community find their lost pets. Some people do this as a sideline job and others partner with shelters and volunteer.
To learn pet detective skills, there is a 40-hour course, where you can bring your dog to train with you. The course teaches you to be a Missing Animal Response (MAR) technician, and it mirrors the techniques and tools used in finding missing people. You’ll learn how to analyze lost pet behavior, use search probability theory to focus your search where the pet is most likely to be found. You’ll also get the basics on training your dog to find pets. Even though the course is only five days, it may take a year or more for your dog to become proficient at the job.
Landa Coldiron and Annalisa Berns became certified MARs and taught their dogs, Ellie Mae, a Bloodhound, and Lilly, a Pointer mix, to find pets. Later they were worked together to find a lost Pug and Pekingese. The dogs had been missing for three days and the owner had no leads. Ellie Mae took the Pug’s scent and Lilly got on the Pekingese’s scent, which led them to a schoolyard. There, Landa asked the school secretary what was going on there three days before and learned there had been a soccer game. Landa got the name and number of the soccer organizer. Fortunately, he had seen and knew who took the dogs. She was able to contact the man, who had decided to keep the wayward pooches. After some convincing, the man did the right thing and gave the Pug and Pekingese back to their beloved owners.
If you’d like to become a pet detective as a sideline or volunteer, MAR courses are now being offered by the Missing Pet Partnership in Fresno, Seattle, Denver, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia and Atlanta beginning in 2008. Online training will be available beginning in November 2007 on HomeAgain.com. You’ll also want to get Kat Albrecht’s brand new book just released this month (Oct. 07) Dog Detectives: How to Train Your Dog to Find Lost Pets.
Lost Dog
Let’s hope your dog is always by your side, but if he were ever to become lost, it’s important to know the steps to take to maximize the probability of his safe return home. Even the most careful and responsible owners can lose their dog, because dogs have a mind of their own and things happen. So, here are the important steps to take, according to pet detective, Kat Albrecht:
Conduct a hasty search. The moment you realize your dog is missing, grab your cell phone and search the neighborhood. If you see neighbors out, ask if they’ve seen your dog. Ask which way he went.
Start calling your animal-loving family and friends to come over. You’ll be panicked and will need people who understand and will help.
Go back home and search your own property. Check anyplace he may hide or could be trapped. Make sure he’s not lying nearby injured.
Get in the car and drive a further distance. Stop and ask anyone who is out if they’ve seen your dog. Ask which way he went. Try to establish his direction of travel.
Go back home, and hopefully, some friends have arrived to help. Assign a volunteer to go door to door asking if they’ve seen your dog. Which way did he go?
Assign someone to find a picture of your dog and make flyers to hand out around the neighborhood. It should say: LOST DOG. REWARD. Include your phone number. Place the flyers in pet-friendly places, such as veterinarian's offices, pet stores and shelters.
Assign someone who can identify your dog to go to the animal shelters to find him. Make sure they also check listings of found dogs. Shelters should be checked daily. Dogs left at shelters after three days become the property of the shelter.
Assign someone to go purchase a stack of bright fluorescent colored poster board. In giant black letters write: LOST DOG. Place a large photo of your dog and a 2 – 3 word description, such as WHITE POODLE. Write your phone number. Leave off other details. Post it at major intersections. People should be able to read it driving by. Here’s a sample poster. If your city won’t allow postings, have volunteers hold the signs.
Place an ad in the classified section of your local paper. After a few days, be sure to check the Found section.
Consider enlisting the help of a pet detective. It may seem too soon to get professional help – but the sooner you get help, the more likely you are to find him. A pet detective can profile your dog and give you advice on his most probable location. Hopefully, you’ll find a pet detective with a trailing dog. The sooner the dog detective can get on your dog’s scent, the easier it will be to find him.
After a week, start checking sites as if you were in the market to adopt a dog just like yours. Many rescue groups use Petfinder.org. You may find your own dog up for adoption.
Be vigilant. It may be weeks before you find your dog. Also, don’t fall prey to schemes. If someone calls saying he found your dog, do not pay a reward until you have him back. Offers to ship your pet to you after you send money are likely a scam. Have someone with you when meeting a stranger to retrieve your dog. Good luck, and hopefully you’ll never need these tips!
Impossible Journeys
Of all the evidence out there that illustrates that pets are wholeheartedly devoted to their owners, and are intimately connected to them, the stories of pets’ journeys to find their owners are the most remarkable. Some pets find their way home on all fours using their ears, noses, and sense of direction as their guides.
One famous story is of Bobbie, a Collie who became lost while on vacation with his family in Indiana. The dog wandered in circles for months, in the harsh winter, before reaching Des Moines, Iowa. There, instinctively, he headed straight for his home in Oregon. Writer Charles Alexander did some detective work on the dog’s trek and found that he had traveled through Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado and, eventually traveling 3,000 miles over six months. Alexander wrote the bestselling book, Bobbie: A Great Collie of Oregon in 1926.
But there are also many “homecoming” stories, where dogs or cats have been left behind when their owner has moved to a new home. Pets have been known to travel hundreds, even thousands of miles, and show up in a place they’ve never been, to reunite with their owners.
Sugar, a part Persian cat with a deformed hip was given to neighbors in Anderson, California when her family moved to Gage, Oklahoma. The owners thought the 1,500-mile car trip would be too much for their tender little kitty. Sugar stayed with her new family for two weeks before leaving in search of her original owners. She traveled for 14 months over rugged terrain to reunite with them.
In another case, a family’s dog went missing just before they moved, 1,200 miles away. Nearly a year later, the dog appeared at the family’s new home. They knew it was him because of a scar on his leg. This amazing story was recorded by Dr. Milan Ryzl in his book, Parapsychology: A Scientific Approach.
Stories like these capture everyone’s imagination. Those in the field of parapsychology refer to this remarkable ability as “animal psi-trailing,” a kind of clairvoyance. Even the late J.B. Rhine, who is considered the father of parapsychology, and coined the term ESP (extrasensory perception), studied the story of Sugar.
When such great distances are involved, it seems implausible that even with extraordinary senses of smell and hearing, pets can track down their owners in places they’ve never been. That begs the question of whether pets have some kind of sixth sense or some kind of psychic connection to their owners. For those in the field of parapsychology, these stories support the idea that there is not only a psychic connection between people, but also between people and their pets.
Traditional scientists however are hard-pressed to accept explanations of extrasensory activity. They speculate that several things could explain these phenomena. For one, in the case of pets who have been left with a new owner, it’s entirely possible that the new owner could no longer handle a despondent dog who was left behind, therefore driving him to the original owner’s new home, leaving him there anonymously. Another explanation is that it’s mistaken identity. A scraggly, malnourished cat appears at the door, and she looks like a very pathetic version of the kitty they left with Aunt Lola, 800 miles away. The feelings of guilt are overwhelming, and they take in the cat, believing she’s theirs.
One pet-loving scientist explained people often believe what they want to believe and focus on the evidence that supports their belief, but ignore evidence to the contrary. It’s human nature.
Whatever the explanation, there are some pets who do have an incredibly strong bond to their owners, and however they do it, they risk everything to come home to them. |  |  | |  |
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