Lost and Found: How to Help Finders Get Pets Home

You ask, we answer! We’re opening our mailbag (okay, our inbox) and getting curious about shelters’ most-asked questions. What’s on your mind? Email your question to sheltermedicine@ucdavis.edu.

What can we do to require finders of stray pets report the animal to the shelter? Is a municipal code the way to go?

We want to do everything we can to make sure families have a fair chance to get lost pets back and that stray animals get the care they need. In our desire to connect with finders and ensure these outcomes, setting clear requirements outlining when and how finders must report animals to the shelter may seem like the logical next step. After all, we want to help finders help pets. But there’s a good chance these requirements, though well-intended, could have the opposite effect. Before you set up a whole bunch of rules and regulations, take some time to consider whether your intentions will match your impact.

Requirements can be challenging to enforce

Unless shelter staff have the bandwidth to scan lost and found pages, Nextdoor, Facebook, etc., cross-check against shelter listings, then identify and cite people that have failed to follow reporting requirements, any code related to this will be largely unenforceable. Plus, from a PR perspective, this type of enforcement could be problematic and further discourage found animal posting. Ultimately if someone finds a pet and wants to keep it, there is little a shelter can do if the finder does not advertise that fact, so we must rely on the finder’s goodwill to a large extent.

More regulations, more problems

Regulations meant to stop problematic behavior can paradoxically produce more problems. Cat feeding bans, for example, are often enacted to eliminate inappropriate cat feeding and associated nuisances, but few (if any) shelters are staffed sufficiently to actually catch people in the act of feeding. As a result, people still feed but, knowing the activity is prohibited, become reluctant to reach out to the shelter for TNR support or other help that could keep things from getting out of hand, and we lose the chance to guide people towards better feeding practices.

Similarly, shelters once relied on burdensome adoption requirements and high fees with the good goal of protecting pets. However, given that shelters couldn’t stop people from getting pets from other sources, that often led potential adopters to avoid the shelter altogether and get an intact—or unvaccinated, unidentified, declawed, outdoor—pet from another source.

Barriers to building trust

Whether we’re talking about feeding bans, adoption requirements, or found animal reporting regulations, we risk missing opportunities to build relationships, even tenuous ones, with the very folks whom we most want to reach. For instance, if there is a requirement that an animal be brought in for spay/neuter and formal adoption back to the finder if not reunited with the owner, people who don’t want to spay/neuter their pets will be more likely to not report. Then the person will be on their own to figure out how to post the pet as found; the pet will be less likely to be reunited with the owner, and there is no longer an opening to discuss resources and reasons for spay/neuter down the line.

Another approach

It’s worth asking if it would be more promising to simply shape the path towards the desired behavior by making it easier, sanctioned, appreciated or rewarded in some way. This is especially critical in light of shelters right now filling up with big dogs; it’s so much better if they can get the care they need and the opportunity to be reunited with their families outside the shelter—where they have a higher chance of getting back home.

Here are a few alternatives to requirements that can build bridges:

If a finder contacts the shelter and posts the pet officially, offer to have an officer come out “for free” to do a microchip scan and maybe give them a couple of goodies, like pet food or a leash.
Qualify finders who complete the process and decide to keep the pet for a free or reduced-cost spay/neuter—what you would offer an adopter, but framed as a perk, rather than a requirement.
Highlight happy endings: When a finder’s collaboration with the shelter helps reunite a pet with their owner or results in an adoption, share that story on your social media channels and thank the finder for their part in making it happen.

People have been finding pets and then finding their owners on their own for as long as pets have been around. By offering guidance rather than regulations, we are inviting our communities to work with us toward a shared goal: reuniting more pets with their families.