Advice & Words of Encouragement
Oliver Alert asked a simple question…
“What advice or words of encouragement can you give to help families with missing pets?”
We received multiple great responses and felt it was worth sharing permanently on our site.
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Jess Saxon of Athens, Pennsylvania – “Never give up!!”
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Sherry Gershon Toy of Summerfield, Florida – “NEVER give up! Read about a dog returned to the owner about 6 yrs after it went missing!”
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Angela Ford of Knoxville, Tennessee – “NEVER give up and leave no stone unturned. They know your love and know you’re looking for them. Pray-God answers prayers and miracles do happen everyday!”
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Lynne Parker – “Ditto what Jess said. It also helps to hold an image of your pet safe and at home. Positive thoughts and feelings really do help. Been through it twice with happy outcomes both times.”
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Kay Bynum-Brennan of Dallas, Texas- “NEVER GIVE UP! My Aunt’s border collie went missing when she sold her farm & moved to the city. 9 months later 13 year old JoJo showed up 120 miles away at the farm! Another friend found his lost doberman 6 months later in a shelter!”
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Colleen McKoy of Ottawa, Ontario- “It’s so hard, but I imagine Never give Up, the Burner here in Ottawa is still missing, but the family is getting help from the community, there seems to be a rash of missing burners in the Ontario region of late, for some strange reason. How can you comfort someone ? How to encourage ? Since I have never been in that situation it’s hard to know what to say. but never give up is all I can come up with.”
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Peggy Hardin of Baltimore, Maryland – “Maushardt Dog found on doorstep after 5 yrs , NEVER QUIT LOOKING – ALWAYS KNOW YOUR PET ARE MISSING YOU AS MUCH AS YOU MISS THEM.”
Lost dog returns after 5 years missing!
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Marian Figley “Don’t give up. Notify shelters, even in counties miles away. Notify vet’s offices, even in counties miles away. Put up signs. Internet, internet, INTERNET! I have a dog I know was lost… but I can’t find her home. She’d been relatively recently spayed, but I can’t find where it was done. She could have been miles and miles from where she was originally lost. I won’t take her to the pound, but it breaks my heart that someone lost such a wonderful little dog and is missing her.”
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Pat Thomas of Bryson City, North Carolina “To NEVER give up. I have seen miracle after miracle. Their love for us exceeds anything we can possibly imagine.”
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Marilyn Cook offered “Dogs always remember your relationship with it, but they function as living in the moment and thus they are very resilient and curious and frightened all at the same time… knowing their resilience is encouragement and hope that unless the…y turn up dead they are alive and striving…striving to explore, to find their way back, to stay alive. It is our human duty to respect their ability in that we never give up on them. And in any sad cases they are dead, know they did not just go down, but it is a person whomever saw it with blind eyes that let it down. God has called upon us to Lord over them.”
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Melissa Leonard said “Never underestimate the power of positive thought…and don’t forget to POST ON CRAIG’S LIST!!!!! People I’ve spoken to say that this was one of the first sites they go to when they have found a dog. My family found our dog because of Craig’s List. NEVER GIVE UP.”
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Joyce Martin Szewc shared, “Post to as many sites with a picture of your pet, as possible…Facebook, Craigs List, your Vet’s office, ask your friends to post on their home page, put flyers up…Keep looking..your pet wants you back as badly as you want them! Don’t give up!”
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Beth Ann Corr of Newton, Massachusetts and www.wagtailfarm.com said, “Never give up & ask for as much help as you need. People are so kind and willing to help when a pet goes missing. Ask questions, post, get the word out any way that you can & find resources like Oliver Alert so that you are not reinventing the wheel. There are people out there who are actually very skilled at finding lost dogs…capitalize on their experience to help bring about a happy ending.”
We hope these words of encouragement and sound advice help bring peace and inspiration during this time. Please leave your own advice to help others below!
I am never giving up! I just want my dog home, and I KNOW and I can FEEL that he wants to be back home too! THAT is what keeps me going! I will always look for him, that’s if he’s not home first!
Don’t give up. I’m not giving up. DJ has been missing since he was stolen from my yard on Dec. 20, 2010. I know I’ll have him home. Someone can take care of him & love him but not like I can love him. So if your missing your pet keep hope alive. Because your pet is missing it’s person.
Whilst looking for my lost Jack Russell (since found), I came across some really helpful information about finding your dog, focusing on their primitive instincts:
Spreading YOUR scent – Bear in mind that she’s lost. You are the key to getting her home but she can only find you by her senses. Her strongest sense is smell. That’s you. Your strongest smell is your urine. You need to bring her home with your smell. So, using your map and your plots of the sightings, you need to sprinkle (lightly, you don’t need much) a scent home. Wee into a litre lemonade bottle and dilute it. Use that to do a trail from the first sighting back towards home usually (or another safe place if you think she’s hiding out).
Keep repeating it. It could take days for her to find it, but all routes/scents need to lead home or to her safe place
Secondly, get yourself a good map of the area. Start to plot the sightings, and, hopefully if your dog is doing what all dogs on the run do, you’ll start to see a pattern forming… it usually becomes a triangular route. She’ll be using where she went missing from as the start, usually her home, as one point and she’ll be weaving a big triangle between the points to try and find her way back to you.
(I’ve seen this done in Africa when dogs track wild animals – must be instinctive)
Good Luck!
Thanks all. We can’t find our Foster dog Rusty and it breaks my heart. It has been 6 weeks. But I know he must be in good hands and will be ok.
I like positive comments and I cry of joy to read amazing lost and
Then found pets, I really need this at the moment, I lost my most
Beloved on april 1st and its so heart breaking, I went to the 2 main
SPCA here and no luck, I posteD in craigslist, will re post If I need
To, I can’t sleep calmed, I have to work, it keeps my mind kinda
Busy, but since I dnt work all day, when I get home I start my
Search, I stil need to go to other hospitals and clinics, can’t seem
To find shelters other than the 2 shelters of SPCA, can anyone
Recommend me any detectives, he could of been stolen around
The area, God Bless the Good Hearted ppl
For people who have found pets: 3 things to do.
1. Notify the local animal control in your county and surrounding counties.
2. Put an ad in the newspaper, but keep the description rather vague so that callers are forced to describe the dog so they can claim it. This avoids scams and people trying to get a free dog (or a dog for malicious purposes like animal testing or dogfighting training.) Something like “Small brown dog found in the Candler Park area. Please call XXX-XXXX to describe and claim.”
3. Put up posters in the area where the dog was found with similar descriptions to the newspaper description.