Fayetteville Animal Shelter
and Animal Services
The best advice of all: make sure your pet has identification at all times. This may be a collar and/or identification tag (even indoor pets should be wearing identification all the time) or a tattoo or implanted microchip. (Contact the Fayetteville Animal Shelter or other animal shelters or organizations for information on tattoos and microchips.)
The first thing to do if a pet is missing is to contact all animal shelters and animal control agencies in the area. Pets may wander quite a distance, or someone may pick up an animal and turn it in to a distant shelter.
So contact shelters and agencies within a 60-mile radius. Provide them with a good description and a recent photograph. If there is no local shelter, contact the police.
If you believe your pet has been stolen, notify the police.
Search the neighborhood. Walk or drive around several times a day, especially early morning and early evening. Carry a recent photograph and ask everyone you see if they have seen your pet.
Offer a reward (it is usually better not to say how much the reward might be).
Run an ad in the newspaper.
Check "found" ads in newspapers.Make up signs, preferably with a picture of your pet, and post them all over.
The Humane Society of the United States warns to be "wary of pet-recovery scams. When describing your pet, leave out one identifying characteristic. When talking about your pet to strangers, offer no information, ask many questions, and carefully answer questions posed to you. Be wary of people who insist that you [give] them money in order for them to return your pet."
Leave items with a familiar scent outside your home, just in case your pet manages to wander back home and is disoriented.
Don't give up. Sometimes pets are reunited with their people months after they are lost.
See more about Lost and Found Pets, including what to do if you find a lost pet.
The above is based upon information from The Humane Society of the United States, a leaflet from Tulsa (Oklahoma) Animal Control, and the experience of a number of people, many of whom have successfully been reunited with a lost pet.