Sunday, January 13, 2008

Important Lost Pet Advice

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 has
http://www.petsonthenet.co.nz/lostpets.htm#Find%20Your%20Pet%20Checklist
They 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 checklist
Lost 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 SPCA
6) 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).
Your notes; ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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 Buchananhttp://www.petsonthenet.co.nz/NZ's nationwide database for lost and found pets

13 comments:

  1. This is great advice.I hope they come back safe. I've given you an award please go to my blog and see.

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  2. This is great information, little Sis. I just wish we nevfur had to use it. :(

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  3. Very good advice, and timely too. I hope Annie and Mao are found soon.

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  4. Thank you so much for putting this up! Very good advise. And what a great service to have - we wonder if something like this exists in th US? If not some one should start it... got to give this some thinking!
    The Cat Realm

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  5. Poppy, You're always full of information. This is a good post. Is this site ONLY for NZ animals or can other countries post there too?

    jans funny farm

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  6. PS - Poppy, Jan is the photographer for the local Humane Society (not the local shelter) and she tells everyone to check at least once every day. The shelter only has to hold a stray animal 3 days here.

    If someone turns an animal in and says it's theirs (people do steal pets or they can feed them a few days and then turn them in as the owner)and the shelter is filling, those animals could be euthanized right away.

    And keep calling. The animal could be there later in the day. Time is of the essence!

    jans funny farm

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  7. The good news is that Mao is back and Annie's been seen eating on the porch this time. Can't wait till she is inside again.

    jans funny farm

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  8. These are wonderful tips, PoppyQ. We need to have a similar site in this country, and our UK friends, too. We need all the help we can get when one of our friends goes missing.

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  9. I'm glad you have such a network.

    I have a little award for you on my site, for when you come to visit again.

    Hugs...G

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  10. That's a cool service! Hey, Mao's home now. Hopefully Annie will go home soon, too.

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  11. Poppy, Thanks for putting all that info together although like Monty, we wish no one ever had to use it.

    Purrs

    Gypsy & Tasha

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  12. Thak you for helping educate the pet communnity, your advice is priceless. When a pet goes missing or even lost it is so important that we proactively react to the situation. Taking steps to protect your pet prior to having this scary and overwhelming incident happen. These steps include always keeping a collar on your pet with I.D Tags. Having your pet micro-chipped and registering them properly. Never leaving them outside unattended, this could lead to their escape as well as giving the opportunity for someone to steal your pet.

    Making sure that you’re pet (s) are registered properly is vital to helping them return home. There are many companies that you can register your pet with. One of these companies is called www.helpmefindmypet.com they provide not only a registry but they also have created a proactive lost pet alert that is sent out in up to a fifty mile radius to all Shelters, Rescues, Veterinarians, Municipalities, Groomers, Kennels, Pet Industry, and Members. People find lost pets; if your community is aware that you’re pet is missing this will create a local involvement resulting in more pets being reunited with their families. Prevention and preparation is essential to keeping your family together.

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