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 more of the stories that our online friends told about losing a dog.
Gwen Jones (California) My first dog disappeared one day after a shouting match I had with a neighbor. I searched for three days—hiked the hills, had friends hike the hills, checked the shelter, no luck. At the end of the third day, my roommate woke up from a nap and called me to say he’d thought he’d heard a dog whimpering in his dream. I got home and heard the littlest whine and discovered that she had been stuck in a sub-basement … for three days!
Took her out for a steak dinner that night.
She had been a very scared rescue dog, shepherd-husky type, and when she heard me raise my voice with the neighbor, she had taken off and looked for someplace safe to crawl into. The problem was, she couldn’t get back out as there was a five-foot drop!
My advice if you’ve lost a dog (or cat) is to check all outbuildings and basements or garages and then check all of your neighbors’ as well! Dogs will generally gravitate toward water, so any creeks or lakes should be checked, too.
Also, description matters! A friend’s JRT went missing and the description she gave to the shelter was not what the finder gave. She thought of her dog as white with a black patch, but really it was a brown patch, so when she saw the finder’s description, she didn’t recognize it as her dog.
Photo by Gwen Jones
Sandee Strobel Szabo (Virginia) We just recently had ALL THREE of our dogs escape and get lost. We were very lucky that they were all found. They escaped out of our back yard because of the rain’s causing erosion under the fence. They were all three picked up by a woman about a mile away who was able to get them all in her car and was nice enough to take them to our local animal shelter. The shelter scanned them all—one of them had a chip and the shelter contacted the rescue that had chipped him. That rescue, Traveling Tails Dog Rescue, connected with me via private Facebook message. We found out that all three were there, as they stayed together, and we were then able pick them all up. We had a happy ending—so lucky! We thought they were all chipped, but guess not, so we will be getting the other two chipped very soon.
Kellie Sisson Snider (Pennsylvania) Someone left the gate unlatched one time and we had let our dogs out in the morning. A half hour later I got a call from a man who said a greyhound with my phone number on her collar had approached him on his walk. Our little dog, Pan, was with her but wouldn’t approach. They were three blocks from our house. Thank God, Bravo got cold and went to get help. Microchips are important, but a collar with a clear phone number will often get your pets home sooner.
Nyssa Gatcombe (Maine) Yes! Boomer went missing for about 27 hours a couple of years ago. He has brain damage and is very picky about people. He had bitten multiple people before, so we were panicking. We were alerted that he was spotted on our local disc-golf course so we rushed over to see him loving on the people who found him. Took him to the emergency vet, he had a temp of 105, and his blood work was so wonky they were convinced he had just been running non-stop for the whole time he was missing. He didn’t even need a muzzle at the vet, he was so happy to be found. Forgot to mention that he was lost from home. A big gust of wind blew open the French doors in our kitchen. He got spooked and ran off. His sister ran off too, but she just went on an adventure and took herself to daycare.
Amber Abbott (Arizona) Rylee—a teenager and a very talented dog trainer and agility competitor—is the owner of the dog. Envy is a BorderPap, I bred. It was a Friday night and Rylee was at a Christmas party. Her dad came home from Walmart with Christmas presents and left the door open for multiple trips. We later figured that Envy got out then and went looking for her favorite person, Rylee, in the garage. Rylee’s father didn’t realize Envy was gone for a couple hours. We also found out that Envy had been hanging outside the front yard for at least an hour before she decided to take a walk. This was at 9:00 p.m. Near the Arizona desert. Envy was gone for several nights. Ended up being almost a mile away on the other side of a busy road.
Kathleen Huggins (Washington) Our two mini-schnauzers ran off together. They were young, maybe a year and a year and a half. I saw them running south; we raced out to try to catch them. No luck. We were house-sitting, so not our neighborhood. Drove all over the fairly rural area, no luck. Three hours, pretty much despairing. A couple of hours later we got a call from our vet where we lived. Someone had our dogs—about two miles in the opposite direction from where we’d seen them. The family found a number on a tag (long time ago, no chip) and got them to our vet. With the tag number they traced us and left a voicemail on our home landline. (As I said, long time ago. No cell phones!) We called into our voicemail for other reasons and were very surprised at the message from the vet. We had given up hope of finding them. We got the number of the people who had them and drove over to pick them up. They never usually acted like besties, but they were “glued” to each other when we got there. The family had two little kids. The kids said they would keep the boy because he was so sweet but we could have the girl. (Not so sweet.) Of course, we took them both.
Briefly, our blind dog got lost on my brother’s farm. I was home alone. We had put a bell on him when he went blind. After three hours of searching, I gave up. Just as I was walking back to our RV, calling him all the way, I heard a faint jingle. He must have got turned around in one of the outbuildings and got stuck in a corner. He was amazing at finding his way around normally. I called again and he came running. He would always run towards our voices, seeming to know it was safe. And I mean RUN. We were both never so happy.
Dave Koch (Washington) BJ the beagle wore a Pet Safe perimeter wireless fence collar because I had no fences on the farm and he was a beagle, after all. He also had a better grasp than I did on when the battery on the collar was dead. I got a call from the county that they had him and I drove to the Valley to bail him out. When I came in the door, I said, “I understand you have a beagle with a dead battery!” Their response: “Oh, BJ! He is so cute and he misses you.”
Jessica Theisen de González (New York) My brother’s pit bull ran out when the front door was left open. He managed to get two blocks until he was picked up by NYPD and brought to Animal Care Center of NYC. Reportedly, he was very nervous and sweet and got retrieved quickly.
My own story, though, is about a cat, not a dog. My cat slipped through a window that was open a bit too wide. I posted signs, checked with neighbors. She was a Siamese, so I was worried I’d never get her back. The fourth day, a note was taped to my door: “Come get your [redacted] cat!” My girl had scaled the fire escape and found a non–cat-friendly home. I don’t know if she was let in or was left on the fire escape—and it had rained one of those days! It was troubling because I knocked on that door, and the neighbor said no cat had been seen. But I got her back and lesson learned. I only open the window if I’m right there, with a screen. (And yes, he was an aggressively weird neighbor.)
Brenda Schultheis (Washington) We live in a rural area of about 400 people and our two labs decided to get out and roam the countryside. We immediately called the local vet clinic where we boarded the dogs when we were gone, in case someone contacted them about the dogs, and we searched everywhere. About 6:00 p.m. the vet clinic called—our dogs were on their porch, wagging their tails against the door, asking to be let in because they knew they got fed at 6:00 when they were boarded! How many dogs run away to the vet clinic? Our goofballs loved it there.
Jamie Robinson (Florida) I don’t generally lose dogs, but there was this one instance that will stick in my memory for a long time.Two dogs, not mine—although one was almost my dog, he was with me so much because his owners traveled a lot for work. Parker the doodle and Frank the Aussie. Frank was a foster and being trained for diabetic alert. Somehow, Frank managed to get the gate moved enough that he got through it and out into the neighborhood. Parker, seeing that Frank was leaving, followed. It was dark out, around 8:00 p.m., and I had gone around the corner of the house to check out a noise when they escaped. I came back to where they’d been to find them gone; this was on a half an acre with the house smack in the middle. I ran out the gate and didn’t see them anywhere, so I got in the car and headed out with the car window open, blowing the recall whistle. I must have driven through 20 streets around me before I decided to go home and call for some help. Just as I was driving up my block and about to make the turn to access my driveway, there were Parker and Frank. Parker had Frank by the collar and was tugging him home.
Here’s a link to one of my favorite blogs, How To Write A Lost Pet Ad That Works On Social Media, with many excellent tips and tricks suggested by our online friends:
HOW TO WRITE A LOST PET AD THAT WORKS ON SOCIAL MEDIA | FOX 28 Spokane