04/09/2024
A Call to Action For all Pet Owners
Part 2 of 6
A CENTRALYZED PET LOST DATABASE
The reality:
The reality of Lost pets is grim. Pet owners rely on services such as Petco’s Pet Lost, (which in my opinion is the best overall website) Pawboost, Vets, Nextdoor, Neighbors, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Facebook pet lost & Found pages, Craigs List, The individual municipality shelters and Humane Societies, and a few others.
Number one Problem: Time
The problem with this is that each site, shelter, rescue, paid on non paid website, neighbors, etc requires a creation of a pet profile, pet notice, or other information about your pet. It took me a younger generation computer savvy , web info savvy, individual a week to set all this up. By the time I finished the 4 day stray hold period had ended..
Not to mention the 32 groups of lost and found pets in Facebook I joined becoming TOP CONTRIUBUTOR in most of those groups. Imagine an older individual who looses their - they might as well call it quits on day one because no way can they do this..
I spent every minute daily on my computer [posting, looking, and trying to navigate the shelter, humane society, rescue, web posting pet world..
State and Local Government
The state needs to do something.. Why do we pay dog licenses and tags when its useless information - if the dog does not have a chip - its worthless
The state should maintain a mandatory registration database for all dogs within the state - if a dog gets lost anyone finding a dog needs to cross reference with the state list which should maintained by an independent organization which answers to no shelter or rescue. And these individuals need to verify the pet and that the owner has been contacted before the adoption process begins
These people should also verify individual pet finders who keep the pets in their homes to make sure that what they are reporting is in fact the dog they found.
The so called stray period
Finally the stray period: In my opinion this needs to be done away with completely - the dog should be eligible for rescue or home foster placement immediately and because they will already be part of the state run database the owner always has the option of reclaiming their pet.
The above guidelines will do away with the following
1. Rescue and Shelter leaning toward a more profitable adoption vs reuniting pets
2. The need to list pets individually on all sites as a listing on the general site run by the stat will automatically give you options to post to all the corresponding sites, including lost and found pages
3. The countless hours spent looking for a pet
4. The uncooperative nature of most staff at some of these places
5. The competition that arrises to claim smaller pets vs larger pets
6. The killing of innocent pets which is the most important..
Coming Up Soon Part 3: The need for a strong community pet missing alert search team by neighborhood
