Another Unhappy Story

He came bounding joyously across the street to meet us …… right in front of a passing car!

“He” was a downright dirty, ragged, maybe labradoodle with a happy grin on his face. The passing car fortunately was moving slowly through our residential neighborhood and braked in time to save him, though the driver gave me a dirty look, obviously assuming “he” was my own out-of-control pooch. The “us” in this equation was me and my dog, Angel, taking an afternoon stroll.

The happy hound, of course, had no ID. And he wasn’t just dirty, he was absolutely filthy and looked as if he had a definite flea problem with bald patches around his rump where someone had made an attempt to shave him. He was however, well-fed, with just the sweetest nature.

This is how a healthy labradoodle looks.

Assuming he might have got loose from someone’s back yard I started canvassing the area. The only thing I learned was that he’d been seen running on a number of ocassions in recent weeks, nobody had a clue where he lived and Animal Rescue had been called a couple of times but, to anyone’s knowledge, were a no-show.

Meanwhile, Doodle (I had to call him something!) was delighted to hang out with Angel. And without an extra lead on me it seemed prudent to head for home, doing my best to canoodle Doodle along. We made it safely and, leaving Angel in the house, I popped the lead on Doodle and went back to the home-searching quest.

Several houses later and still luckless I flagged down a passing kid on a bike and, “Eureka”, he knew the dog and its home. The hound’s name was Yoshi and he lived about three blocks away.

On approaching the house, the next door neighbor happened to come out with her beagle.  She recognized Yoshi, of course, and told me his story. The dog had been adopted from the pound by a mother for her son. The boy, apparently, loved the dog and took reasonably good care of him but in recent weeks the pup had just been let out of the house to roam free every day.

By now I wasn’t too keen on returning the pooch but I hated to part a boy and his dog, so figured a few words of reproach might do. I never got the chance! Mother opened the door, took Yoshi, and slammed said door right in my face! The brief glimpse I got inside was, frankly, ghastly. The dog was no more of a mess than the mother and home. I had to wonder about the son.

Anyway, I’ve since found out that there has been trouble at that unhappy home. The son has been taken away and is living with his grandparents in another town. There have been times, also, when the mother has gone away and left the dog in the house without food and water. The neighbor has been able to feed him through a broken window.

You can be sure I’ll be keeping a careful eye on Yoshi’s circumstances from now on. I may just have to keep walking Angel in that area and, if Yoshi “happens” to follow me home again, he won’t be going back.

There is of course a moral to this story. In fact it goes to the heart of what this blog is all about. It’s all too easy to adopt, or buy, a pet, without the slightest idea of what is required to care for that pet or any concept of the commitment involved. So many animals who are adopted and apparently “saved” from shelters end up right back at another shelter, that is if they’re lucky enough not to be dead.

And there’s yet another little twist to this episode. The neighbor’s beagle isn’t actually the neighbor’s beagle. He was found earlier that morning by the neighbor and her husband when they were out walking. No ID (surprise, surprise!), rather thin and very hungry. He was another sweet-tempered little dog though, unlike rambunctious Yoshi, very shy. According to the neighbor he was not house-trained (another common reason people dump their dogs) and, sadly, she was unable to care for him and had phoned Animal Rescue to come and get him. I just so hope he finds a loving forever home!

“Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.”  ~Agnes Repplier

Finding Fido

Even the most careful of pet parents can lose their pet. I discovered our dog, Angel, was just about double-jointed when I took her for her very first walk. A van drove past and she completely freaked and was out of her harness in a heartbeat. Fortunately, I was able to grab her and call my husband to bring the car. For the five minutes it took my husband to get there I hung on to Angel with both arms and legs, terrified that she might break away.

I learnt a couple of things from this incident – you just can’t be too careful and you can’t be too prepared. Angel was a rescue (of course) who had been very severely abused. She’d reached a level of comfort and confidence in the home that led me to believe she was ready to venture into the great wide world. And for the first couple of blocks, it seemed that was so. But the van (a white one) changed all that. There’s no way to know what horrors Angel associated with white vans, and every white van she encountered elicited a similar response. Happily she’s progressed to a confident dog who has overcome her “vanophobia”.

The point of this story, however, is to highlight the need to be prepared to deal with a lost dog or cat, or ferret, or whatever critter is part of your household. One out of every three pets will be lost in their lifetime, so here’s what to do:

PREVENTION:

1. Microchips. Chances are, if your pet is from a rescue organization, microchipping will be mandatory. The chip is easily implanted under your pet’s skin and the chip’s code (which is the key to your contact information) can be scanned by a veterinarian or animal shelter.
Problem is, this is not by any means a foolproof system. Assuming your pet is found, he has to be taken to someone with the means to scan for a chip and a lot of people simply won’t bother with that. Even if they do, there are many chip-manufacturing companies but no universal scanner that can read them all. None-the-less, it’s the first essential step in ensuring your pet’s safe return home.

2. Pet ID tag. Be sure to have ID tags on your pet’s collar or harness with your contact information – address and phone- clearly engraved. I have a toll free number that I include with my cell number on my pets’ tags. Although I no longer need the toll free number for business, I keep it specifically for use on the tags. You might be surprised how many people won’t make a toll call when they find your pet. And the cell number, for me, is preferable to the home number because I always have my cell phone with me.
A word of warning, though. ID tags are useless if your pet is not wearing them! Which leads to the next point.

3. Register your pet with PetReturn.com. This is a free service that works on the same principal as microchipping but provides bar-coded tags instead.

4. Secure your home. There’s a school of thought that dogs, in particular, should wear their collars with ID even in the home. I wouldn’t like to wear a choker round my neck day in and day out, nor do I want my dogs to. So I make sure my pets can’t escape. My husband regularly checks the back yard fence for weak spots and digging. And we built an enclosed entryway around the front door that we consider our security net.

5. Restraints. I’m not talking about putting your dog on a line in the yard (I absolutely disprove of that) but using the right collar or harness and lead.
We haven’t yet found anything that Angel can’t get out of (I probably should have changed her name to Houdini) but these day I use the easy walk harness with success and I can attach it to her collar for added security if I think it’s necessary. Vinny and Coco, my two poodles, do well with regular harnesses.
The thing is, find what’s best for you and your pet and always keep a tight hold of the lead.

6. Training and exercise. Obviously, a well-trained pet is far less likely to run away. And hand in glove with that is exercise. If Fido has hardly been out of the house all week, of course he’s going to be overly exuberant and energetic and will go chasing after that squirrel.

7. Keep current information on hand. Make sure your vet, the microchip company, pet sitter, etc. are up-to-date with your contact information. Keep recent photos of your pet to use if you have to go looking and post signs. It won’t do any good to hand out pictures of Fuzzy looking adorable at age 3 months when he’s now 6 years old.

IF YOUR PET GETS LOST

1. Alert the microchip company, PetReturn, your vet, other local vets, neighbors, rescue shelters and humane societies.

2. Put an ad in the newspaper. It won’t cost much and some papers will run ads for free.

3. Canvas the neighborhood where your pet was lost but, bear in mind, dogs and cats can roam for miles, so you may need to knock on an awful lot of doors.

4. Post flyers in the neighborhood with your pet’s picture. Take flyers to local vets, pet stores, churches, restaurants (hey, your pet will likely be looking for food), anywhere you can think of.

5. Offer a reward. Money is a heck of an incentive to a lot of people and could mean the difference between your pet being left to risk injury or death on a highway, or being taken into someone’s home ‘til you can be notified that Fido is found.

6. Use Find Toto. This is a paid alert system that systematically calls your neighbors to let them know you’re looking for your lost friend.

7. Use FidoFinder. Here you can search found listings and post your own classified listing in the lost section. They also give you the ability to pre-register your pet in case he ever becomes lost.

8. If you’ve lost a cat, try a humane trap outside your house. Put food inside, along with your feline’s bedding or familiar things that will entice her inside.

9. Be persistent. Keep calling the shelters or, better yet, visit them. Make sure your posters and flyers are still upand keep canvassing the area. If you call out Fido’s name make sure you move slowly so he has time to get to you before you move on.

10. Consider an animal communicator. Listen, I’m skeptic, but I’d be willing to try anything to get my pet back home and I know people who swear by animal psychics and communicators.

11. Don’t give up. We’ve all heard stories of pets who’ve been lost and then found after weeks or even months and, yes, like Rocco, after 9 years!

“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”  ~Colette