Trash or Treasure?
These mutts are what I value most in this world.
Trash or Treasure?
We are coming up on July 4th, the busiest time of the year for lost pets. Already, we have so many requests for help that people are becoming upset with me that I haven’t had time to help them. With fireworks and visitors and vacations and open doors, the lost pet problem is only going to get worse in the coming weeks. Every year at this time, I post an article about Loss Prevention. Almost every lost pet could have been prevented if some precautions had been taken. Certainly every single lost pet could receive better assistance, once they’ve gone missing, if their owners were prepared and ready before the cat or dog went missing. My web page received 17,000 page views last week. The page on how to find your lost cat had 1500 views. The page on loss prevention for cats had zero views. Many years ago, Kelsy and I did a TV interview for a local station, to tell people the easy things they can be doing for loss prevention. In 2008, Kelsy and I started volunteering for Missing Pet Partnership. In 2012, we started Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue so that we could help lost pets full time. In 2013 we started the nonprofit Useless Bay Sanctuary so we could help stray dogs with no known owner. In 2014, I started the Facebook group Lost Dogs of King County, which now has 30,000 members and reunites dozens of dogs every day. In all that time, with all of the ways we have been trying to help pets who are lost, we have failed spectacularly at getting the word out about loss prevention. Why?
Is this dog trash or treasure? Kelsy, the sweetest dog in the world, the reason I do this work in the first place, was at a rural shelter. She and her sister were 9 weeks old. They had been found and turned in to the shelter, and no owner came forward to claim her. Who doesn’t want a 9 week old black lab puppy? She was no trouble at all. She never caused me a single problem, unlike many of the dogs I’ve loved. Kelsy became a working search dog, and she saved the lives of dozens of lost dogs. Kelsy and I worked together for 8 years, until she died of cancer at age 11. I would give anything to spend just another day with Kelsy, and I think of her every single day. I always took measures to prevent Kelsy from going missing, and if she ever had gone missing, I would have done everything in my power to find her.
Viktor is not my favorite dog, I’m sorry to say. Although he has many nice qualities, I just haven’t been able to establish a strong bond with him the way I did with Kelsy and my other dogs. Although we have had Viktor for over 6 years, he has not become what you would call a cuddly or friendly dog. Sky always tries to play with him, and he ignores her. About the best interaction I have with him every day is that we go for long walks and he pretends he doesn’t know me. This morning on our walk, Fozzie and Viktor chased some rabbits, while still leashed. We didn’t even come close to catching up to the rabbits, but chasing rabbits is about the most fun Viktor ever has. Even after 6 years of acting like he is my prisoner, I still hope that one day he will acknowledge me in a way that I could interpret as friendly. Even though Viktor and I don’t share a strong bond, still I would do anything in my power to prevent him from going missing or to recover him quickly. In fact, when Viktor did escape, in the first week I had him, I dropped everything and I spent over 100 hours searching for him and trying to recover him in that week he was on the run. Volunteers put in hundreds of hours trying to help me catch Viktor. (Viktor had GPS at the time, but it malfunctioned.)
Every dog and cat, from my beloved Kelsy to my ambivalent Viktor, is a treasure. Mu, Fozzie, Sky, and Tino were all unwanted dogs, unclaimed by whoever their previous owners were. For ten years, Mu has been a rock, doing the bulk of the searches for Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue, and finding more than 300 lost cats. I absolutely love him, and I hope people can tell that from the pictures I take of him. Valentino was born in my laundry room and has been my constant companion for almost six years. I could not be myself if I didn’t have Tino near. Every day, I try to take quality photos of my dogs, because they are beautiful, because I enjoy photography, but mostly because I try to use these photographs to convey to people how much I love my dogs and how much they mean to me. These pictures, which are sharp and show my dogs’ current appearance, would also be useful if one of them were to go missing.
Tino has a GPS tracking unit. T never wants to be anywhere except at my side, but it’s possible there could be a freak accident and he could go missing. I would use the GPS to find him right away. If any of the other dogs went missing, they also have trackers, but I could use Tino to find them, too. I have preserved their scents. Today I made new scent articles for each dog and put them in the freezer in labeled bags, just in case. I even made a scent article for Tino, so his friends Haas and Max and Layla could track him if necessary. Every year before the Fourth of July, I make new scent items and store them in the freezer.
I don’t know what to tell people to get them to focus on loss prevention. It seems that every year I fail to get people to pay attention to the simple ways they could protect their pets. Even though I have always failed at this, I will never stop trying. Many of the most important battles in your life are battles you are ultimately going to lose, but that doesn’t mean you should ever stop fighting. If you have ideas about how I could get the word out about loss prevention, please let me know.
Below are the links to various articles about loss prevention. Could you please share one of these links with someone you know?
James I absolutely love your articles...the love you have for your fur babies...just always warms my heart...Thank you so much🐾🐾❤️
This information should be shared at shelters when adopting out a pet.