Don’t give up.

Persistence pays off in many cases.

When should you give up looking for your lost pet?

I hope you would never give up, but I can understand why people do.  It can really wear you down, to be searching for a lost pet every day.  Especially if you don’t get any new information.  When I lost my cat, it was before I knew all the ways to find a lost pet.  There weren’t any search dogs that searched for lost cats back then.  We did everything we could think of, but after several weeks, we felt like we had run out of things to try.  I kept going to the shelter to look, which resulted in us getting another cat and a dog.  I always felt like I didn’t do enough to search for my lost cat.  Knowing what I know now, I can look back and see that we should have done many things differently.  I always wonder, if we had tried just a little bit harder, could we have found him.

In my career of finding lost pets, I can think of many cases where the owner of the lost pet was looking to us as their last hope, their last chance of finding their lost family member.  I never thought that was true, and I always encourage people to not put too much hope into the search dog.  When a search dog is successful, it’s often the only way that pet would have been found.  However, the search dog is only successful about 25% of the time, according to records I have kept for the last 14 years.  I hope people will think of the search dog as one tool out of many.  If your cat or dog is missing, you should use as many methods as you can.  For example, large posters are a great way to make contact with someone who has seen your lost dog, but pets are found because of large posters only about 25% of the time.  Posters alone are about as effective as a search dog alone.  If you use both, you’ve boosted your chances to 50%. If your dog is in a ravine or alongside a river, a search dog may have a better chance of finding her than relying on posters.  Because you don’t know which scenario matches up with reality, you should use both options, to cover both eventualities.  If you cover all the ways your pet could be found, posters, fliers, social media, physically going out to look, asking people to check their doorbell cameras, and hiring a search dog, then you increase your odds of success.

Recently, I have been remembering times when, as a search dog handler, I was about to give up and call off the search, thinking we had done all we could.  Then we gave it one more try, and we were successful.  For example, on the very first “walk-up find” of our career, Kelsy and I searched for Thelma for 6 hours.  We were very tired, and we hit private property.  It was late in the day, and I didn’t think we would be able to contact anyone to get permission to continue following the scent trail.  Thelma’s owner was persistent, and she asked us to stand by while she tried to get permission for us to go onto the private property.  She was able to contact someone, and we got the okay.  Kelsy tracked the scent up behind a warehouse to some landscaping, and there was Thelma, hiding under the low branches of an evergreen tree.  After I had decided we had done all we could for the day, the owner encouraged us to make one last attempt, and it worked.

On the second walk-up find of Kelsy’s career, we searched for Charlie for hours.  We came to a point where the scent trail hit private property, and I couldn’t see any way to even figure out who owned the property. I knocked on a few doors, but I didn’t get an answer.  I decided to call it a day, since we had done all we could.  I planned to tell Charlie’s owner everywhere we went, hoping the information from tracking would give them a way to focus the search in a new area.  As we were walking back to our truck, about 200 feet from where we had stopped officially searching, Kelsy’s nose went up, and she tracked a scent over to a patch of brambles near the street.  There was Charlie, napping in a little nest he had made in the thorn bushes.  After I felt we had done all we could, we chanced upon Charlie because of Kelsy’s excellent nose, and her drive to always find the lost dog.

On a search with Mu, near the Edmonds ferry terminal, we searched for hours for a cat that had fallen from a third floor balcony.  We searched all around the landscaping where she would have fallen, and then we searched a 400 foot radius all around.  Mu was starting to get too warm, and we were both tired.  The owner of the lost cat asked us to just make one more sweep of the landscape near the place the cat had fallen.  Mu worked his way around the juniper hedges, and he located the cat in a place where we had already searched, where she hadn’t been when we started.  She must have moved around as we were searching, avoiding the search dog.  Because the owner encouraged us to take a second look where we had already searched, we were able to solve the case.

On rare occasions, we have found evidence of a predator attack, and it appeared the lost cat or dog did not survive.  In one case, Mu found the skull of a cat 100 feet behind the fence of the home where the cat had gone missing.  We had searched all over, and we hadn’t found the cat alive.  Although there was no fur on the skull, and no way to confirm that this was actually the missing cat, circumstantial evidence suggested that the most likely explanation for finding a cat skull 100 feet from where the cat was last seen, was that it probably was the missing cat who had died.  I told the cat’s owner that we could be wrong, and it could be a coincidence.  Maybe the skull belonged to one of the other cats who had been reported missing in the area.  I said that, if they never did find their cat, then the finding of a cat skull so near their property would suggest the most likely, simplest explanation, that their cat had been taken by a predator.  I told them they should not give up the search, that they should keep looking for their cat.  The next morning, their cat went into the humane trap they had set, and the cat was home safe because they didn’t give up, even when the evidence suggested their chances were slim.

On another search, Mu found remains of an animal, but it was badly damaged.  As far as we could tell, the fur color seemed to be a match for the lost cat.  The bone fragments we could find were too damaged for us to even be sure what species we were looking at.  The remains were 150 feet away from the cat’s home.  It was circumstantial evidence, in the absence of a DNA test, but it appeared that the cat was likely deceased.  Again, I told the owners that they should not stop searching because it could just be a coincidence, and the fur and bones could be from another cat or even from another species.  The next day, their cat came home.  It turned out that the evidence was just a coincidence.

I helped a woman on the east coast by advising her on the best ways to find her cat.  She put up large posters to let people know her cat was missing.  Unfortunately, because it was a black cat, she received many sightings which turned out to be other cats.  She asked me, by email, how long she should continue to search.  I told her that, if it was my cat, I would never give up.  It’s true that no one can afford to devote all of their time to searching for a lost pet, week after week.  Eventually, people need to return to work, and get on with other tasks of a basic living.  It wouldn’t be realistic to expect anyone to search for their lost pet for 16 hours every day for a whole year.  I advised her that she should take a break from the search and focus on other things, but that she should come back now and then to continue searching for her cat, getting the word out and following up on leads.  She received six sightings for black cats that were seen, and none of them were her cat.  Then, on the seventh reported sighting, it turned out that it really was her cat, and she was able to safely recover her.

If you ever feel like you have to give up the search for your lost pet, because it’s just too time consuming or exhausting, then you should put the search on hold for a while as you get the rest of your life back on track.  After you have things under control, please resume the search the best you can, and keep following up on potential leads.  I know it can be frustrating to track down so many false sightings, and that it is emotionally exhausting to get your hopes up about a lead and find out it was the wrong pet.  Maybe during the first week of your pet being lost, you spent 80 hours searching, following leads, losing sleep and skipping meals and missing work.  Obviously you can’t keep going at that pace indefinitely.  Maybe you need to scale back the search, but don’t give up.  Focus on the other parts of your life, but take an hour here and there to refresh your posters and your online posts.  Talk to neighbors that you weren’t able to reach during your first canvas.  Be ready to respond if you get a call about a potential sighting.

Volunteers for Useless Bay Sanctuary worked hard to recover a lost dog named Annabelle.  We were close to catching her, but then she wasn’t seen in the area any more.  We kept scanning posts online of dogs that could be her, and we followed up on reported sightings, even the ones that turned out to be hoaxes or scams.  Eventually, we got reported sightings of a dog that might be her.  We kept checking out the leads and we found out it was her, wandering a neighborhood about a mile away from where she had been seen before.  We trapped her in a humane trap three months after she had escaped.  Through a fluke, she managed to break out of the trap, and she was on the run again.  Although it was discouraging to have caught her and lost her, we kept working on different strategies of catching her. A week later, we found an opportunity to trap her by blocking her into a stairwell with a barricade.  This time it worked, and we were careful to not let her escape again.  Annabelle is healthy and happy, now, in foster care, not living on the streets any more.  We didn’t give up, and eventually we got her.

If you haven’t found your lost cat or dog after a week or two, I know that the constant worry can wear you down.  Take a break from the search if you need to.  Get some rest, and get the rest of your life in order.  After a while, pick up the search again, and try to make sure you have covered all of the possibilities.  If you give up the search, then that will greatly reduce the chances you will see your pet again.  If you don’t give up, you may just get the break you need to finally find your lost dog or cat.  Get support, ask for new volunteers and reinforcements.  Put the search on the back burner as you take care of other priorities.  But don’t give up.  People who have stuck with the search have been rewarded.  Not always, though.  I know people who have kept looking for many months and have been unsuccessful.  I know it can be hard to keep going.  Find a way to get the help you need.  Persistence doesn’t always pay off, but it can sometimes be the way to success.  Giving up is a certain path to failure. Keep at the search, and the next lead you get could be the one that makes your family whole again.