Escape! Be Prepared In Advance

“We’ve lost a dog,” said Kathy, interrupting my ‘good morning’ phone greeting. Kathy and all her dog daycare staff were graduates of my Operation Find Fido Workshop. “What happened?” I asked. “Skye jumped both our four foot internal walls, ran through the main inside door just as a client opened it and then slipped out the outside door just as another client was coming in.”  And that’s how quickly it happens.Losing a dog is a risk of all dog professionals. Minutes count. If you have lost dog flyers ready in advance, you can immediately launch into search mode. You – and mostly your client — will not be thinking clearly at the moment a dog goes missing and even simple tasks such as using a computer will become stressful. Too busy for creative art time?  I hear you! But after an initial hour creating a template, this should add no more than ten minutes to each client intake.

Flyers will be used as hand-outs and also posted anywhere people will be walking by. The goal of flooding an area with lost dog flyers is to increase the number of eyes looking for the missing dog. And this needs to happen within the first 24 – 48 hours.

Follow these steps and you’ll be ready:

• Using your computer, create an 8 ½” x 11” template and use black ink for less fading. Take two digital photos of four-legged clients as part of your intake. Owners will have many, many photos of their dog in all sorts of cute poses but we want a clear head shot and full side body shot that clearly depicts their dog.

• You don’t want a flyer cluttered with unnecessary information otherwise nothing will be remembered – only the facts, m’am!  LOST DOG or STILL MISSING is a clear heading. Include the dog’s name, breed and description — the general public may not know what a Rottweiler looks like but will understand “large, black and tan dog with stubby tail” – but keep descriptions short. Age is not vital. Weight may be added as gives an indication of size that cannot be conveyed in a photo. You don’t need extensive description of the collar (eg. pink with white paw prints on it) since collars may not even be on the dog anymore. And you don’t want people discounting a black and tan dog simply because there was no collar – you want every possible sighting being reported, at least initially.

• Include two contact phone numbers, you don’t want to miss calls if you’re using your phone to coordinate a search. We are a very polite society, so add “Call 24/7” otherwise they may think twice about calling at 5am.

• There is no need to include date lost or location. It is not relevant to anyone else when or where the dog was lost — he’s lost! –and it only adds to the information clutter. If you saw a flyer that indicated a dog was lost two months ago in an area 12 miles away, what do you think? Right. The dog was either found already or deceased and that Rottweiler you just saw couldn’t possibly be the one.

• Predict the question and add “If flyer’s still posted, dog is still missing” so everyone knows the search is still active. Just like on craigslist – “if you see this ad, item is still available”.  Add DO NOT CHASE to remind people to squash their instinct if they spot the missing dog. You know from working with dogs that chasing is rarely effective and further puts a dog at risk for injury if chased into traffic.

• Don’t advertise a reward. As a police officer, I’ve spoken to more than one criminal who said they found or stole a dog and waited for the reward posters. True dog lovers will help because they want to help, not to make money and rewards may invite criminals or greedy people who will chase a dog, putting him at risk.

• Create and save a digital flyer for each client as part of your intake, print it and file in a master emergency response binder (if it’s for your own dog, make 50 copies right now!).

Nobody wants a dog to go missing but it happens, a lot. Prepare for the possible situation by creating lost dog flyers in advance. Oh, and Skye? Within 39 minutes of the escape, we had photocopied and distributed hundreds of flyers to pedestrians within a ten block radius, the sighting reports started coming in and within five hours, we had located Skye. “It all worked!” Kathy said and was later given flowers and a big hug from Skye’s humans.

Michelle Sevigny, B.A.
info@dogsafe.ca
www.dogsafe.ca