Lost Dogs of King County Turns Ten

Together, we have saved more than 50,000 dogs.

Lost Dogs of King County Turns Ten

On October 11th, 2015, I lost my dog.  Viktor was a dog we had captured a week earlier.  He was temporarily staying in the laundry room.  I knew he was a flight risk, so I had him set up with a collar and a harness so I could walk him with two leashes.  I had a GPS unit for him, but it wasn’t working and I was trying to work with the company to get it fixed.  The laundry room had an old cat door, but it was too small for a 45 pound dog to get through, I thought, and I had nailed a board over it and blocked it with boxes.  It wasn’t even visible, and I thought a dog wouldn’t even be aware of the blocked cat door.  One morning, I went to the laundry room to see Viktor, and he was gone.  He had shoved the boxes aside, pried the board off, and squeezed through the cat door, which apparently was not too small after all.

I had a search dog, Kelsy, so we tracked Viktor as far as we could.  The scent trail went in a large loop, and came back near the house, and then we lost the scent.  So, I posted on Lost Dogs of King County.  The Facebook group was key to getting sightings and coordinating the search effort.  Of course, having years of experience finding lost dogs, I already knew all of the things I needed to do to recover Viktor.  The LDKC group just made things much easier.  We caught Viktor after a week on the run.  We located him in a housing development, fed him plenty of tacos until he fell asleep between two buildings, and then put a large net between the two buildings.  When he woke up and bolted, he ran into the net, and I tackled him.  Viktor lived with us for seven years.  He was a character.

Lost Dogs of King County turns ten years old on June 2nd.  I started the group with the mission of giving people in King County a place to post about their lost dogs, and giving them the best advice. This group has helped more than 50,000 dogs get back to their families.  We now have almost 50,000 members.  When people post about their lost dogs in our group, they reach a large audience of people who are eager to help any lost dog get back home.  Unlike many places where you can make a post about a lost dog, we also offer the best advice on how to find your dog.  Other groups and services are riddled with bad information and scammers.

When your dog is missing, it is very likely you would take the wrong approach to get him back.  Two common mistakes are chasing after a dog and calling his name.  These are instinctive actions anyone would do, but years of experience have shown that these approaches usually make things worse.  As soon as people post about their lost dog, Admin Lily Burns lets them know that they should avoid these common mistakes, or, if it’s too late for that, dog owners can at least stop making things worse, and start taking actions that have been proven to work.  With over 50,000 dogs recovered, we have a bedrock foundation of knowledge.  If you compare our group to many others, you see that bad advice is allowed to spread in other groups, reducing the chances of dogs getting home.  Our group, unlike most others that I am aware of, has a companion web page with extensive information on the best ways to find your dog.  You don’t have to wait for someone to tell you.  You can go to our web page where it is all laid out and easy to access.

If your dog is missing, it is very likely that you will be contacted by a scammer.  LDKC takes active measures to block the scammers, and we warn you so you know what to watch out for.  Other groups and pages are riddled with scammers, and people often find out the hard way that, when your dog is missing, you may be desperate, and vulnerable to exploitation.  If you get stung by a criminal exploiting your situation, not only can it cost you money, but it can waste your time and tie up your attention chasing a false lead.  Every day, we block people from all over the world who try to join our group and exploit our members.

Now that we have grown to become the largest and most successful group helping dogs in our area, more than 10,000 dogs are posted as missing in our group every year.  We know, in advance, that at least 30 dogs will go missing in King County tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.  We also know, from experience, how to prevent those losses.  Our web page tells every dog owner many ways that they can protect their family members.  Most loss prevention measures are inexpensive and easy to implement.  If you are willing to spend a little more money and invest time and effort, you can make it virtually impossible that your dog would go missing.  We continually advocate for everyone to take loss prevention steps.  If fewer dogs went missing in King County, we could focus more attention and resources on each lost dog and help them more effectively.

In King County and neighboring jurisdictions, the shelters are full.  Recently, some shelters have been at more than double their designed capacity.  This can make the shelter a worse experience for a lost dog.  The Lost Dogs of King County group helps dozens of dogs get home every day so they can skip the trip to the shelter.  Our local shelters would be in even worse shape if groups like LDKC weren’t doing so much of the work in reuniting lost pets.

Even though Lost Dogs of King County is already helping dozens of dogs every day, we could do better, with your help.  First, I would like you to invite someone to join the group, even if their dog isn’t currently lost.  More than 150,000 dogs live in King County.  Statistically, it is likely that one third of all dogs will go missing at some point in their lives.  If your dog hasn’t been lost yet, there is a significant risk your dog would go missing at some point.  Maybe while you are on vacation, the pet sitter will accidentally leave the door open.  Maybe a meter reader will open a gate and let your dogs out.  Even people who take precautions, like me, could still lose their dogs.  If we had 100,000 members, that would mean that each lost dog would have the attention of more potential witnesses and finders.  If each current member got one new member to join, all of our dogs would be safer.

Another way you can help is by learning about loss prevention and telling others.  Our web page explains the best ways to keep your dog safe.  Just ask anyone whose dog is currently missing, and they will tell you that they wish they had done a few simple things in the first place, before it was too late.

Another way everyone can help this group to be more effective is by following the rules.  Lily Burns admins this group at least 16 hours a day, 7 days a week.  She has to delete hundreds of comments every day, and it takes away from her attention that she could be focusing on helping lost dogs.  Everyone who joins our group agrees to the rules, and they are not unusual or unreasonable.  If you are making a post about your lost dog, please include as much of the vital information as you can, so that if people want to help you, they know where to look and what the situation is.  Before you comment on someone’s lost dog post, ask yourself if it is going to help that dog get home.  Lily works hard, all day every day, but she wouldn’t have to work so hard if people would follow the rules they agreed to.

Lost Dogs of King County is the gold standard for helping people find their lost dogs.  Our group is more effective than any other similar group I am aware of.  I see many groups posting advice that can hinder your dog being found.  Lost Dogs of King County also partners with a nonprofit rescue group, Useless Bay Sanctuary, to help stray dogs with no known owner.  Together, we can coordinate volunteers to set humane traps and help dogs who otherwise probably would not be helped.  Besides being one of the largest and certainly the best, our group is free to use.  There are for-profit pages that say they offer similar services, but their pages are not moderated, and anyone using their services is guaranteed to be contacted by a scammer.

Although LDKC is free to use, we have a suggested donation for those people who choose not to follow the rules.  For example, posting an unnecessary comment, such as one that has already been made by someone else.  For such an infraction, it is recommended that you pay $1 to our hard-working Admin, Lily Burns, who works about 100 hours a week for free.  Lily is not volunteering 100 hours a week because she is independently wealthy and has nothing better to do.  Her family has a very limited income.  She helps lost dogs because she can’t not help them.  Knowing that she can save dozens of dogs every day, she simply can’t turn her back on them.  If everyone actually made an appropriate donation to Lily for each infraction she has had to deal with, she would be a millionaire.  On a typical day, Lily removes or corrects at least 75 posts or comments that violate our clearly stated rules, which all members have agreed to.  Although LDKC is not a 501c3 nonprofit, it is still an all-volunteer organization dedicated to helping lost dogs.  If a fraction of our 50,000 members could send a $1 tip to Lily, for all of the lives she has saved, it would certainly make her life easier.  Of course, Lily is going to work as hard as she can, either way, donation or not. You can send a little something through Venmo to Lily Burns.