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LINKS

Here is an updated list of pet related sites, Facebook pages, etc. you can search if your pet is missing or you’ve found a pet.  A couple of basic tips:

 

On a Lost post, the owner is likely to know the breed. Don’t assume a Found post will know the breed for sure. Could be a person like me who has to look at a pic to differentiate an Australian Shepherd from an Australian Cattle Dog.

Use vaguer search terms, like deselecting a specific breed, and narrow by gender, location/radius, and color(s).

A couple of tries with different search terms sometimes gives you different slices of data.

(this list is also under my mission and FAQ page explaining these are sources of info for me to look for lost and found pets)

SOURCES OF INFORMATION:

  • Craigslist  – I’ll be scanning at least daily, both Lost and Found  and Pets  as some lost/found items get posted there.
  • Orange County Animal Services has a lost and found forum also. You can search by keywords but don’t be too specific. I search for “College Park” a lot, or by breed.  Owners should also scan OCAS’s pet population frequently:  Dogs / Cats / Other. They don’t give location of intake but they do list the date. They do advise to go at least once in person and do a walk-through.
  • GreaterOrlandoLostPets.com, which is set up like WinterParkLostPets, only it doesn’t seem to have as much activity.

National or wide ranging sites searchable by map and/or zip:

  •  FidoFinder.com for dogs, and   TabbyTracker.com ( they look like they are sister sites)
  • HelpingLostPets.com which has a coded map.
  • LostMyDoggie.com is another national site. You search lost/found separately by zip/radius but can narrow to breed, gender, size, etc.
  • And, just realized, there is a companion site, LostMyKitty.com.
  • PetKey is a site that you can search by zip, drilled down to lost/found and dog/cat/bird. I saw a few there I didn’t spot elsewhere. Note: there are some very old posts on here – they never go away.
  • Pet Amber Alert allows you to browse lost pets but doesn’t display found ones. It looks like they charge a fee to call residents in the immediate neighborhood. I’ve seen an ad for the same on Craigslist.
  • Another site that lists mostly lost pets is FindToto.com.  There is a section for “I found a pet” but it’s a little trickier to find and not as full. I’ve optimized these links to Florida results; hopefully that will work for you.
  • Something called America’s National Lost & Found Pet Database, out of Alabama. You can drill down by pet type (species) and state at first, then you’ll be able to zone in by zip or city. A few in our region posted there.
  • A nonspecific database called LostandFound.com. In my brief experience, this is a poorly designed site and the most recently reported lost pet or object was from Dec 2012 (as of 4/2/14), though some are hard to tell as there is no year. I tried contacting one dog’s finder but need to “purchase contact credits.” Um, NO.
  •  PetHarbor is a web site in which you can search various shelter databases at the same time. I used it for a Seminole County missing pet. It’s a little clunky but helpful. It seems to have ONLY shelter intake animals, though, not privately found pets.
  • Lost and Found Hound: a very small site with few, national, listings.

LOCAL COLLEGE PARK INFO

  • Local College Park groups like the CP Partnership and CP Community Paper often post on their FB pages about pets as they learn of missing or found ones.
  • I get Home Again alerts (as a subscriber for my microchipped cat) and will forward that info here.
  • NextDoor.com is a great concept. It’s like a ‘gated’ Facebook in that you only get access to info in your own neighborhood and a few adjacent ones, has some taps to/from city government, and has lots of local info sharing. I copy the lost/found info to NextDoor and share from it.  It’s free, but you do have to prove you live where you say, so you may have to put landline phone info in, or a credit card for billing address confirmation.

OTHER FACEBOOK PAGES

Loose Dog? Don’t chase! Stop, Drop and Lie Down

Loose Dog? Don’t chase! Stop, Drop and Lie Down.

 

Great advice on NOT chasing a dog – your dog or a stranger – because its instinct would be to run.

Also, if you should find a parrot on the lam, they don’t like aggressive behavior, pointing and staring… try to coax it into a game of peekaboo. It’ll probably be delighted and get curious.

Cats – well, there’s no telling. I say this as the caregiver to cats. They’ll get hungry.