In New Zealand we has the super Pets on the Net. Because there are only 4 million beans in our country, and there pusscats, woofies and buns is very important to dem, volunteers run dis website where you can register any lost or found furriends.Dis is there super advice for if you lose your furriends. I has done a copy and paste so it is not so tidy - but if you click here you can see the super page they hashttp://www.petsonthenet.co.nz/lostpets.htm#Find%20Your%20Pet%20ChecklistThey are great, and most of all never give up. They have success stories where furriends went back home to beans after weeks or months. I hopes we finds Mao and Annie soon.Stage One (Immediately)
1)
Search your house, garden and your immediate neighbours. Click here for our
house, garden and immediate neighbour search checklistLost Pet sign (free and very effective!). This is our real life example, we made it from two tomato stakes, the side of a cardboard box and poster paint. Everyone driving or walking past knew our cat was missing and where to come if they saw him!
Here's our cat Homer, back home after five days and happily smooching his sign, which now says FOUND! Click for
Homers Success StoryAnother Success Story due to signs!"My boxer pup went missing for approx. two weeks. We put a large sign on our fence and our baby came home!!!! The people saw our sign.... A Success Story! - don't give up hope. I did get the suggestion re: sign on our fence, from petsonthenet.co.nzand it worked a treat. Feel free to use our success story....Belinda"
4) Ring
Animal Control (especially for dogs, although a few also do cats)
5) Ring the
SPCA6) Ring all local vets in your area, including after hours vets.
Create and copy your mail box
flyers (with photo, preferably in colour) to all other neighbours in street and surrounding streets. Click here to see our
sample flyer and checklist for flyers.Put a lost pet sign up on your fence and berm(See right for real life example and a real life success story due to a sign just like this one).
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Stage Two
9)Flyers to local shops, dairies and supermarkets (click for our
lost pet flyer checklist so you get all the important information on all your fliers, first time!)These flyers really should be in colour, with a photo and also laminated. Your pet will be far easier to identify in colour and your laminated flyers will stay up a lot longer on shop windows and train stations etc then a flimsy paper flyer will. Paper flyers quickly get dog eared and rip away in the wind. Lamination will protect your flyer and make sure it serves it purpose whilst it's needed. It could be weeks, so they need to last.Click here for your
nearest place to get photocopying and laminating done for your flyers and signsLoads of our
Success Stories have come from people who attribute their success in finding their pet to following our checklists, including our
Flyer Checklist One of many Flyer Success Stories'Yes! After 4 long nights Max ventured in atmidnight, letting my partner and I know that he was back - no worse for wear and with a full belly! Max did a runner at midnight on Wednesday and on Friday night I put out a whole lot of flyers in neighbouring letter boxes. I believe some kids liked my friendly cat but their parents seeing the flyer "let him go". Barbara."
10)
Ads in local papers.Stage Three (Subsequent Days)
11) Stephen from Wellington got reallycreative to find his kitten, The Sneak. He made these tee-shirts, saying "The Sneak is not dead".Happily, The Sneak was found safe and well at the Wellington SPCAthrough an ad on petsonthenet.co.nz.And now Steven has the teeshirt/sto prove it!
12)Continue to call
SPCA/
Animal Control regularly - preferably daily, but definitely at least once within any seven day period. This is because if a shelter such as the pound or SPCA etc receives your pet, they only have to hold them for seven days. After seven days, they can rehome your pet, or even euthanise your pet. So keep checking!!!!
14)Continue ads in local papers for as long as you want to.
15)See our
Success Stories pages for hope when you're feeling in need of a boost. Our longest record was
a cat found after 11 months (through petsonthenet.co.nz!), so please do keep checking and keep your ad on the system. A pet can be missing for weeks, or even months. Experience with other cases has shown that you need to continue your ad on petsonthenet.co.nz (and to check the found pets on petsonthenet.co.nz) for up to one year.
16)Continue to drop
flyers in your street and widen out the area you drop flyers into and place posters in. One of our Success Stories came from the third flyer drop, the people widened their flyer drop by putting a poster up at the train station far from their home. That was the one that worked. A commuter saw it and recognised their cat.Again the
Success Stories give a myriad of tips of what worked for others, they're well worth reading.
How can petsonthenet.co.nz help?This free community e- service means you can have a free ad (with a free photo too!) to get your message out to a wide audience at no cost. We also compliment and enhance the effect of your other advertising such as flyers and newspaper ads too - just add a cross reference to petsonthenet.co.nz with the ad number for your lost pet ad. See our
checklist for newspapers ads for more tips. We'll store a much more detaileddescription and a photo on this site at no cost whatsoever. To put all this detailedinformation and a photo in a newspaper would be prohibitively expensive - we help you get more exposure for less. And the more people that know your pet is missing, the more chance you have of finding them.Time is of the essence. Put your best effort in now while peoples memories are fresh. You have a hugely greater chance of success if you do your flyers and ads as soon as possible. Don't wait a week before you decide to do anything. Do what you can do now; take a sick(with worry) day or annual leave if possible so you can really concentrate on your search. We've got heaps of good ideas that can help you know what do now to find your pet. A
free ad on this site is a great place to start. Wishing you best of luck and that pet is home with again soon, safe and sound...with kind purrsfrom Kim and Gavin Buchanan
http://www.petsonthenet.co.nz/NZ's nationwide database for lost and found pets
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