Empower Owners, Engage Your Community to Boost RTO

Looking for ways to increase the number of lost pets returning to their owners in your community? Take these steps to create a winning model that engages pet owners, volunteers, and your broader community to reunite lost pets with their families! 

Provide Tailored Resources

The quickest way to engage the community is by making the process easy with handouts and online resources personalized to your area. Do this by including links to local community pages like Next Door, Craigslist, and Facebook page or groups for lost pets, and creating your own downloadable flyers.

On your website, share critical tools the general public may not be familiar with like the Petco Love Lost database and Pawboost. When refreshing your website, get inspired by Cabot Animal Support Services’ easy-to-follow 5-step guide to help finders locate pet owners.

Engage Your Community

Now that the general public can easily access these resources, look for other avenues to collaborate by cross-posting with other shelters, rescues, and local businesses to increase the visibility of each lost pet. The more sharing, the better the chances of a reunion happening. Check out Petco Love Lost's toolkit, From Intake to Engagement: Keeping and Getting More Lost Pets Home, for tools and tips. 

Consider a model that engages community businesses to become “microchip checkpoints”. Better Together Animal Alliance has provided local businesses and community gathering places with a microchip scanner, trains on its use, and promotes the locations so the community knows where they can scan a lost pet for a microchip without having to drive to the shelter. 

Volunteer Powered

There are often untapped volunteers who want to help animals from their homes. Let them help through creative positions like these that support the Lost Dogs of Wisconsin. 

Maddie’s Fund Back Where They Belong recording outlines additional ways to engage with the community and leverage volunteers in the return-to-home effort.

Watch Your Language

In the shelter and online, it’s essential to help community members feel comfortable coming forward to reclaim their pets by training staff and volunteers to avoid statements or assumptions that the pet was dumped, or not loved and cared for by its family.

Susan Taney, Founder and Director of Lost Dogs Illinois, keeps focused on reuniting families and maintains a zero-tolerance policy for judgmental comments. Set the tone by providing staff and volunteers with appropriate language and scripts. Consider hiding or deleting inappropriate online comments, and community managers can post gentle reminders about the community rules, as needed.

Be Flexible

Your goal is to reunite lost pets with their people. Explore what other barriers may be preventing people from coming in to reclaim their pets. Are there ways to flex pick-up times, reduce or waive impound fees, or accept proof of ownership other than a license or microchip? Can you provide lost pet resources in additional languages? Survey customers who have reclaimed their pet to find out what could have helped them get reunited faster, then start making changes. 

More Helpful Resources

• Proactively share easy tips with your community: 
  • Tips for Finding a Lost Dog 
  • Tips for Finding a Lost Cat
  • What to Do When You Find a Lost Dog or Cat
• Check out the HASS Lost Pet Reunification Toolkit. 
• Read Lost Dogs of America's 5-part blog series, Harnessing the Energy, on how rescues and shelters can organize teams of volunteers to help capture a lost dog.
• Review these guidelines to see what's needed to start a state Lost Dogs site like Illinois or Wisconsin.
• Explore how Lost Dogs Illinois and Lost Dogs of Wisconsin empower pet owners and the wider community to help lost dogs.
• Browse ASPCApro's Animal Shelter Essential Resources Hub.
• Watch Northern Tier Shelter Initiative Zoomies webinar: How Agency Culture & Community Engagement Helps Reunite Lost Pets.
• Download HeartSpeak's customizable lost and found pet graphics.