We see so many “lost dog” posts on social media every day. We don’t always get the whole story of how the dog was lost, and rarely are we told the details of how the dog was found.
In search of more information, I asked experienced dog-guardian friends online: “Your dog was lost—was your dog found?” I encouraged, “Share the story of how your dog was lost and, I hope, found … even if the dog was not found.”
“Happy endings or sad outcomes—tell us about the dog, where the dog was lost (from your home, on a walk, on a trip, or … ?), how did the dog get parted from you or escape whoever was in charge, what did you do to try to find the dog, what failed, and what succeeded?
“Include your best advice for novice dog guardians in a lost-dog scenario, including excellent ID, tracking apps, involving the community to find the dog (signs, online posts, searching)!”
Here are some of the stories that our online friends told about losing a dog.
Amy Suggars (Ohio) I have a fenced-in backyard and, when I am home, my dog can access the yard through a dog door. (The dog door is closed when I’m not home.) It is my dog’s routine to wake me up for breakfast around 5:00 a.m. every day. After I feed her, I open the dog door so she can access the yard and I’ll go back to bed to try to catch another hour of sleep. KD will finish her morning outdoor routine and then get back in to bed with me. One morning I woke up about an hour or so later to realize KD wasn’t in the house with me. I checked the backyard and she wasn’t there either! That’s when I saw that the gate to my fence had been propped open with a rock!! My stomach did a flip flop. I started to get scared because it was dark out and she is a black dog.
KD is a trained retriever, so she knows that three toots on a whistle means to come to me. While still in my pajamas and with bare feet, I grabbed my whistle and got in my car. I started driving around the neighborhood blowing the whistle and looking for KD. I asked kids at bus stops if the they had seen her. Unfortunately they had not. I’m sure that they thought I was insane … riding around the neighborhood in my pajamas and blowing a whistle!! After several laps around the neighborhood, I decided I better go home, get dressed, and check the local shelters. I guess she had been gone at least an hour or more by then and she wasn’t wearing a collar with tags. Anything could have happened! I was really starting to panic.
As I was approaching my house, I saw a police car coming slowly in the opposite direction. He stopped in front of my house. As I pulled up beside him, I said hopefully, “PLEASE tell me you have my dog!!!” He rolled down the rear window and KD popped her head out!
It turns out that Officer Kolb lives less than a block from my house. As he was leaving the neighborhood on his way to work [that morning], he saw KD standing in the street. He loaded her in his car and took her to the police station. Another neighbor of mine also works with the police department and she recognized her as my dog! Officer Kolb put KD in his cruiser and brought her home!! WHEW! It takes a village!! I am so lucky that my neighbors cared enough to take the time for a lost dog!!
Why was the gate of my fence propped open? My yard service had propped it open when removing leaves and neglected to close it. I now have signs posted on my fence gate to remind people to close it! For several reasons, KD was not wearing a collar. In light of that situation, those reasons are no longer important. For her safety, KD now wears a flat buckle collar with a flat ID plate engraved with my address and phone number.
KD is microchipped and I’m sure that would have eventually helped to get her home. But having an identification tag (that doesn’t dangle) is probably the quickest and safest way for a dog to be identified.
I will be forever grateful to my neighbors for the safe return of my best friend.
KD in the police cruiser!
Photo by Amy Suggars
Julie Flanery (Oregon) Short story. Took my dog on a trip to see family. Went on a day trip with my mom, left dog with sister. Dog got out—gone five hours. Several sightings of her crossing an eight-lane freeway, one sighting by an SAR handler. She pulled off at the next exit, sent her dog out, and it came back with my dog in tow!
Lori Leah Monet DVM (Colorado) Not my dog but a friend’s. Belgian Tervuren champion. Stolen from the owner. This was 50 years ago and no one knew the Belgian breeds and thought it was a long-haired shepherd. Months had gone by when I saw a man walking the dog. I asked where he got it and he said “the owner’s husband” had sold it to him. The owner wasn’t married. The police convinced him to give the dog back.
Heidi Ritz (Texas) I adopted a “feral” dog who was afraid of humans. She had spent the first months of her life living in the hills near the city. She was terrified of me, and all humans. I had a six-foot fence around the back yard. One day, out of fear, she easily jumped the fence and ran. She was missing for seven days. None of the traditional ways to lure her back worked. She was not interested in a shirt that smelled like me. She was scared of that. Finally one day I got a call. Her collar had gotten tangled in some bushes and come off near a man’s yard. So he called me. It turned out she was jumping his fence and eating his dog’s food and drinking his pool water. He stayed up late one night and grabbed her by cornering her before she could jump back out. I am forever thankful for him. He refused all offers of a reward, except a six-pack of beer. She was dirty, skinny, and scared … but she was back. That was over 16 years ago. She is still with me and she’s no longer afraid of me. She has been a loyal and beloved part of my life.
Tracy Brad (Washington) Yes! He had a microchip and someone took him to a vet to get checked.
Sheri McEachran (Washington) My first rescue dog, Jake, had severe separation anxiety, dug his way out of my dog sitter’s yard, and was hit by a truck while I was at work. I received a phone call from Emergency Vet. (He had a chip.). I approved surgery and rushed to where he was being treated. An unknown Good Samaritan had witnessed the hit and run and took him to the emergency vet clinic. I was told that when Jake was brought to the vet, he was in shock and would not have survived much longer without care. So about 20 or more years ago, this unknown woman saved my dog’s life. I was a young widow at the time and Jake was my world. I hope she will somehow see this blog and know it was her. I never got a chance to thank her.
Emily Rogeness (Massachusetts) In 2001 a foster dog, Tia, was coming to Massachusetts and she got away from her foster home the night she arrived, right before a blizzard which would deliver three feet of snow. I knew the chances were very slim that we would find her alive. We did not, but she was on the run for about two weeks. They were almost no resources for finding lost dogs aside from Sherlock Bones, where you had to buy a book and then they would send out postcards to people in the neighborhood. That seemed grossly inadequate given that I felt this was a race against time and we had to run as fast as we could toward a solution. A woman in the area offered to help me, and she ended up becoming a pioneer in the volunteer work of lost-dog searches. We brainstormed to develop ways to get this dog back, but we just didn’t have the time—the weather was against us. Tia was found in a pond; she had fallen in. But the documentation Debbie and I put together is the foundation for a lot of the lost-dog work done today. (I called Debbie the Temple Grandin of lost dogs.) Tia was not found alive, but afterward I worked as hard as I could to help save other dogs in her memory.
Here’s Tia’s story on the LostDogSearch.com website.
How To Find A Lost Dog | PetMD.com
How To Find A Lost Dog | HumaneSociety.org [U.S.]
How To Find A Lost Dog | PetcoLove.org
What To Do If You’ve Lost Your Pet | AmericanHumane.org
Lost And Found Dogs | PetFinder.com
If You Find A Lost Pet | AmericanHumane.org
NEXT WEEK: More stories—some sad, some happy—about finding lost dogs!
