If you didn’t catch the Dog Show on Martha Stewart, Adopt-A-Pet.com’s Pia Salk spoke about pet adoption with Martha joined by a well behaved pet in need named Benjamin. Pia discussed with Martha the reality of pet over population, mentioned a few tips about adoption, and showed viewers how to use adopt-a-pet.com. The entire clip can be found over at Martha Stewart’s website. You’ll also find a number of other videos from the Dog show, along with several fun do-it-yourself pet projects.

Exciting news!  If all goes as planned, Adopt-a-Pet.com will be featured on the Martha Stewart Show next Wednesday, March 18th!  We’re heading to NY to join our friends from Purina on a show entirely dedicated to all things pet.

Tune in to see Pia Salk talking about the beauty of pet adoption.  She’ll even introduce a couple of adorable dogs needing homes.  We bet they won’t be homeless for long after they’re featured on national TV.  We hope that a lot of people from all over the country will be inspired to adopt a pet from their local shelter or rescue group and will learn that Adopt-a-Pet.com is a great resource to assist in their quest for a perfect match.

What better way to really connect with your furry companion than to vacation together, and you don’t even have to pack an extra bathing suit for your pet. Of course, sometimes we travel with a pet because we must, like during a cross-country move. Whatever the reason, everybody (including your pet) needs to get to where they are going safe and sound. Here are a few tips from our traveling guide.

5 Tips When Traveling With Pets

• Make sure the pet has proper identification.
• Label your pet’s carrier prominently with your name, address, and
  phone number.
• Consider your flight schedule and any time your pet might be outside being moved in and out of the plane.
• Book a direct flight with no layovers.
• Never sedate your pet before a flight without consulting your veterinarian first.

These are just a few of the many tips you can read in our complete Traveling With Pets Guide.

This article starts out with some quick tips for what to do when you loose, then provides more detailed advice for what to do when you’ve lost or found a pet. An ounce of prevention is worth days, weeks, or months of a cure: If you’re reading this to prepare just in case, be sure to check out our article on how to Prevent Your Pet From Getting Lost.

3 Tips To Find Your Lost Pet

• For dogs, check along routes where the dog is walked
  For cats, check inside neighbor’s garages. Cats often hide nearby. Read our detailed Lost Cat Tips
• Post flyers immediately
• Visit all local animal shelters, at least every other day
  

Read on for our more in-depth what to do below.

 

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Lost Pet Guide

If your pet is lost, there are only a few possibilities: Your pet is either on the streets; your pet has been found and taken somewhere like a shelter, someone’s home, or to a rescue organization, or your pet has been stolen. Since you may not know, the best chances of getting your pet back is to cover all the possibilities:

Go out looking for your pet:

• If you have a regular route where you walk your dog, comb that route on foot. Bring along a leash, strong-smelling food, such as a hamburger patty, hot dog, or an open can of wet cat food, and your dog’s favorite noise-making toy. Keep in mind that your dog may be hiding out of view, especially if he or she is afraid, so walk slowly and alternate between calling your dog’s name and listening quietly for any movement or response.
• If you’ve lost your cat, he or she may not have roamed very far. Try leaving some food out at night, when cats are most active, and note if the food is being eaten. If you’re not sure if it’s your cat or a wild animal eating the food, here’s a tip: place the food on a mat, and sprinkle baby powder on the mat. In the morning, you’ll be able to see paw prints in the powder, which will let you know the size of the animal that’s been chowing down! Also see our detailed Lost Cat Tips.

Post and hand out flyers:

• Flyers should always include a photo, ideally a close-up photo made as large on the page as possible.
• You can use our free Lost Pet Flyer template.
• Keep in mind that most people who see your flyers will be driving by quickly or will see your flyer from a distance, so make them as easy-to-read and as eye-catching as possible. Make the flyer with brightly-colored paper. Use the largest photo and letters possible.
• Keep the information very simple. Include the word “Lost”, a large photo, the pet’s name, the date, your phone number, and the word “reward”, if one is being offered (see below). Do not give out too much information. You will want to make sure anyone who calls you is actually in possession of your dog or cat, especially if you’re offering a reward, and you can do that by asking them for more specific information, like color of the collar your dog was wearing or the location of your cat’s three brown spots.
• Always include the date so people know it’s a current flyer will actively be on the lookout.
• Consider offering a reward. The word “Reward” on a flyer is very eye-catching and may cause more people to look at your pet’s information and photo. A reward is also a good incentive for people to be extra vigilant in keeping an eye out for your pet. Be sure you have your pet back in your possession before you give out the reward—there are unscrupulous people out there willing to scam a heartbroken pet owner out of reward money, so be careful.
• Place flyers not just on telephone poles and signposts, but also on car windshields in your neighborhood, on local public bulletin boards in retail stores and parks, and in the lobby of apartment buildings nearby. If the apartment lobby is locked, don’t be shy about asking a resident to let you in so you can post a notice.
• Hang your flyers in a wider area than you’d think necessary. Dogs and cats can end up quite far away in a short period of time.
• Bring flyers to all local veterinary offices. If someone has found your pet, there’s a chance they’ll take him or her to a vet to be checked out and scanned for a microchip.

Visit all your local animal shelters:

• Immediately call and visit all local animal shelters, even those you think might be farther away than you think your pet would have traveled. A phone call to the shelter is a first step, but should always be followed up by a visit; sometimes the volume of animals in the shelter is so high that the staff may not be aware of new pets that have been brought in. Call and visit the shelters very frequently, daily if possible, keeping in mind that in shelters that euthanize, your window of opportunity to claim your pet may be limited
• At the shelter, make sure you check in all areas, including the infirmary. Also, a more unpleasant task that we hate to mention: check the shelter’s list of dogs that have been impounded deceased.
• Call and email all the animal rescue groups in your area. Often, the first thing a well-meaning person who found a dog or cat will do is call no-kill rescue groups to see if they can take the pet. Ask your local rescue groups if they’ve taken in a pet matching your dog or cat’s description or if they’ve been contacted by someone who found such a pet.
• Keep actively searching and visiting your shelter for at least two to three months.

And more…

• Place a Lost Pet ad in your local newspaper’s classified section, post on social media and in Facebook lost and found pet groups for your specific area, and post on the neighborhood website Nextdoor too. Check all those places for a Found Pet ad, too.
• There are many web sites that specialize in lost and found pet postings. Be sure to check these out and utilize their service as well.

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Found Pet Guide

Don’t assume a pet you found was abandoned. Pets can be lost for a long time and be found in terrible condition, but may still have a loving owner who will be overjoyed to have their pet returned.

• SCAN FOR A MICROCHIP: This is one of the most important things you can do! Take the pet to any veterinarian office, Petco grooming salon, or animal shelter to have the pet scanned for a microchip for free. 
• Call your local animal shelter to report the found pet but also be sure to ask what are the laws are governing what you must do if you find a pet. Every city has different laws.
• Post flyers. See the section above for detailed advice. Keep a couple of key details off the flyer. Give out only enough information so the pet’s owner will suspect it’s their pet. For instance, if you find a Bichon Frise with a red collar, you might advertise “Found: Small white dog with collar”. When the owner calls, ask him or her to describe the collar and ask what breed their dog is. Beware of unscrupulous characters who will try to claim dogs for nefarious purposes.
• If you can safely house the pet while you attempt to find the owner, that’s wonderful. If not, call local rescue groups to see if anyone has room to foster the pet for you and to help find the pet a new home if the owner cannot be located.
• If there are children playing in the neighborhood where you found the pet, talk to them! Children are an incredibly valuable resource in this situation—they tend to know all the pets in the neighborhood by sight, since they spend so much time outdoors.
• Call all local shelters to see if anyone has reported their dog missing. Post flyers in all shelters.
• Take flyers to all veterinary offices in the area. If they don’t recognize the pet as one of their patients, ask if they can post the flyer in the waiting room.
• Place a Found Pet ad in your local newspaper classifieds, and check for a Lost Pet ads as well.
• There are many web sites that specialize in lost and found pet postings. Be sure to utilize their services as well.

If you’ve followed your local found pet laws and looked for the pet’s owner for the minimum required (30 days) and you are unable to keep the pet yourself, you can list the pet for adoption through Rehome by Adoptapet.com

A pet is sometimes just like a toddler, and left alone they will explore every inch of the house. In light of that fact, if you are planning to adopt and especially if you have not had a pet in the household before take note of these common household items that can harm your new pet.

• Chocolate
• Coffee/coffee grounds
• Raisins and grapes
• Cooked bones can splinter and cause internal injuries
• Avocado
• Onions and onion powder
• Macadamia nuts
• Alcoholic beverages
• Prescription drugs, Always keep well out of reach
• Fabric softener sheets dogs and cats love to play with these, but they’re toxic
• Fertilizer and plant food
• Antifreeze smells sweet, so pets love to lick it out of a puddle on
  the street, too

When in doubt, assume something is poisonous for your pet. Better safe than
sorry!

I saw a story on the news this weekend about firefighters who staged a daring rescue of a dog who had fallen through a frozen lake in Massachusetts.  Thanks to their heroic actions, the dog survived, but one of the firefighters was briefly trapped beneath the ice and had to be taken to a hospital to be treated for hypothermia.  I looked up the story online and noticed that the user comments fell squarely into one of two camps: there were those who were grateful to the firefighters for saving the dog’s life, and there were those who were angry and didn’t understand why a human being would risk their own life to save a dog.

Those of us who treasure our dogs, cats, and other animals as family members understand.  We can easily put ourselves in the shoes of the dog’s human family and shudder to imagine the panic they must have been feeling during the two-hour ordeal.  It must have been terrifying for them (and for the poor dog as well), and the gratitude they felt to the firefighters must have been beyond words.  I am extremely happy for them that their story had a happy ending.

That said, this incident was avoidable.  According to the fire lieutenant, the dog was not on a leash and traveled 300 feet onto the ice before he fell through.  Had the owners kept a leash on their dog, firefighters would not have had to risk their lives to enact this rescue.  Please, always obey leash laws.  If there are no leash laws in your area, use common sense. Never allow your dog off leash near an ice-covered body of water or any other potential hazard!

This is a very exciting time for us–thanks to the trailblazing Pia Salk, our spokesperson and psychologist extraordinaire who specializes in the human-animal bond, Shepard Fairey has created this amazing image to promote pet adoption!  This is huge–Shepard Fairey was recently named Icon-Maker of the Year by Time Magazine. His “Obey” clothing line is the biggest thing out there right now, second only to his Obama “Hope” images you see everywhere.  He also designed the official inauguration poster–pretty prestigious stuff for a street artist!

Check out MuttsLikeMe.com.  We’ll be selling 400 limited-edition signed/numbered prints, t-shirts, stickers, and more…items will be going very fast (Fairey print runs usually sell out in a matter of minutes), so make sure you sign up to be alerted by email when the sale begins.  You can also download the image in all kinds of sizes and formats.  Please post it everywhere you can–it’s time to get the message out that adoption is not only the most responsible option, but it’s cool, too!

A 10-year-old dog abandoned by her owner at the pound…a pit bull confiscated by police after his homeless owner is arrested for beating him…38 unsocialized corgi mixes removed from the home of a mentally ill man…an elderly chow mix rescued after spending over a week on the side of a Los Angeles freeway…what hope do dogs like these have? The answer: Pooch Heaven, a non-profit rescue, where there is no such thing as a lost cause.

Located on an 800-acre ranch in Southern California, Pooch Heaven is home to 50-70 adoptable dogs at any given time, as well as eleven “sponsored” pets (those who are not adoptable due to serious health or behavioral problems). One look at Pooch Heaven’s pet list will tell you all you need to know about this organization: they believe that all pets deserve a chance at a happy life, no matter their age, breed, or background. Many of Pooch Heaven’s pets have special needs due to physical disabilities or medical conditions, or are difficult to place because they are older. Once Pooch Heaven takes in an orphan, the lucky dog is set for life—literally. Pets who don’t find homes live out the remainder of their lives at Pooch Heaven, and adopters must agree to return their pet to Pooch Heaven if they ever become unable to care for him or her, no matter how many years have passed since the adoption. “Once we rescue a dog, we consider ourselves responsible for that dog for the rest of his life, and we wouldn’t have it any other way,” says Jamie Lee, Pooch Heaven’s administrator.

Pooch Heaven is always full to capacity, and adoptions are sometimes very slow. “The puppies and young small dogs we rescue are very easy to find homes for,” says Lee, “but when we take in an older dog or a maligned breed like a pit bull or a rottweiler, we know that it may take months, even years, before that dog is adopted. We never give up hope, though, no matter how long a dog has been with us. Every one of these wonderful dogs deserves to live in a real home with a person or a family who loves them. We believe there’s a family out there for each of them.”

If you live in Southern California and you’re looking for a pet to adopt, check out the pets at Pooch Heaven! You can be the home that one of these pooches has been waiting for!

This story comes to us from Robyn R. of Los Angeles:

HappyBeginnings! I googled “rescue dogs” and got a plethora of photos from Adoptapet.com. I was overwhelmed by the amount of animals in need of a home. One of the first pictures I got was of a Cocker named Dakota. I knew this dog was for me and my two boys. We raced over to Friends of Animals shelter and a woman was just about to walk a dog and I just knew that it was Dakota!! I said, “Dakota!” and he looked up at me, and the volunteer looked at me incredulously and said, “Oh, you know Dakota?” Even though the photo I’d seen was just of his face and very small, I felt such a connection to this dog I knew it must be Dakota. I adopted him immediately! He is approximately 7 years old and doesn’t let a tennis ball leave his mouth! He has brought such joy into my life and my family’s. I kept receiving Search Saver e-mails about other available dogs and couldn’t resist getting him a buddy. We went back to the same rescue foundation and adopted Max, a very spirited 1-year-old Cocker. He is the clown of the family and keeps us laughing and moving! I get stopped on the street daily to tell me what beautiful dogs they are!

Thank you for enriching my life with these wonderful animals. Not only did I save their lives but they are saving mine by giving me unconditional love and happiness.

This month, we’d like to introduce you to Southern California’s Bichon Furkids Rescue, a very special organization dedicated to saving the lives of a very special breed: the Bichon Frise (they also work with Bichon mixes and Maltese Bichons). They do a great job of it, too—although they’ve been in operation for less than a year, they have rescued and re-homed an incredible 80 dogs! Why adopt a Bichon? Explains Marti Colwell, co-founder of Bichon Furkids, “Bichons are wonderful dogs; they have an independent spirit and are intelligent, affectionate and lively. They are, by nature, happy and loving, and they respond well to training…and who can resist those adorable little faces with those huge black eyes and noses?” Marti and co-founder Mena Thiers are dedicated to making sure each Bichon goes to a wonderful home where their needs are met: “Bichons are naturally sociable,” says Marti, “and they’re happiest when they are part of a family that interacts with them a lot.”

Bichon Furkids is currently trying to find a forever home for a wonderful pair of pooches with a sad story. Casey and Bitsy (pictured) came from a home where they were neglected, never taken to a vet, never groomed, and never cared for. They slept together in a small, hard plastic crate with only each other for comfort. By the time they were lucky enough to be taken in by Bichon Furkids, both of them were suffering from terrible ear infections. Despite everything, they are affectionate, happy, playful as can be, and READY FOR A NEW HOME! They are a bonded pair, and must be adopted together. If you’re interested in being the hero who provides the happy ending to Casey and Bitsy’s story, contact Bichon Furkids!