What to do if you see an animal loose on the street
I have discovered that a person’s response to seeing an animal loose on the street is as unique as their own fingerprint or trackable scent. Some people will go out of their way to catch an animal, while others will turn around and walk away.
One common response to seeing a loose animal on the road is to attempt to catch the animal. If somebody makes an attempt to catch an animal, there are only two possible outcomes. Either the animal is caught, or it is not.
Here are some key tips on how to catch a loose dog on the road. Offer them really yummy food to entice them over. Their hunger at that moment might be enough to draw them to you. Raise your voice and talk to the animal in your best “baby talk” voice. Woman have an easier time with this, compared to men, but a man can still perform this successfully. Remove any hats and sunglasses, since these tend to scare animals. Bend down as low as physically possible, so you are practically on your stomach and are not intimidating. Turn your back away from the animal, and don’t stare at them directly. Look at them from the corner of your eye. A direct stare can be too intimidating and frightening. Have a leash ready with a loop in one hand to put over the dog’s head as soon as possible. You may only have one split second of a chance, so it needs to be accurate the first time. As you are trying to get the animal to come to you, hide the leash behind you to not scare the animal. Never run after the animal because this frightens the animal into thinking they are being chased. Try to get the dog to come to you by doing the above things.
Here are some key tips on what NOT to do if you find a dog loose on the road. Never chase them or run after them. Try to get the animal to come to you by appearing non-threatening, especially if the animal is cornered. It may take several minutes for them to calm down, see the food in your hand and respond to you. Never wave or throw things at them like leashes or toys or other objects. They will think you are trying to harm them. Never rush the situation. Give the animal time to see you as a friend and to understand that you are there to help them.
If the animal is successfully caught, there are two more outcomes. You can surrender the animal to the local shelter, or you can attempt to find the current home on your own and file a Found report with the local shelter. If you attempt to find the current home on your own, and don’t take them to the shelter, there are several ways to find them. If the animal has visible ID tags, then a person can easily call the number on the tag, and hopefully all the information is current, and the animal is quickly reunited and returned back to their current home. If the animal does not have visible ID tags, then you can have the animal scanned for a microchip. This can be done by taking the animal either to a vet or a shelter, and then can run the scanner over the dog’s body to see if there is a microchip. If there is a microchip, then the person can be contacted and the animal can be returned home.
If the animal does not have either a microchip or ID tags, then there are other things to do to attempt to find the current home. You can check Craigslist for Lost ads in both the “Pets” and “Lost and Found” sections. You can place an ad in Craigslist for a Found animal, and you can place an ad in local and surrounding newspapers. You can also post flyers in local bulletin boards like schools, churches and stores. Animals can travel very far when lost, so it is a good idea to check surrounding communities if you have found an animal. Remember to post flyers with a clear, color photo of the animal in the local and surrounding areas, and distribute them to vets within a vicinity of at least one mile. A larger distance may be needed in rural areas where the nearest vet is several miles away.
If somebody does respond to the ads and flyers, ask them for proof that the animal in the flyer is their pet. Commonly, you can ask for current photos or vet records. Before meeting with them to possibly return the animal to them, ask them for a phone number to call them back to confirm that their call is not a prank.
What if you do all these things to find the current home, but nobody comes forward to reclaim the animal? I think that a good time frame to confirm that everything has been done to find the current home is about 30 days. If all the above steps are taken and followed and maintained for 30 days, and no person comes forward to claim the animal, you are free to decide what to do with that animal. You can surrender the animal to the local shelter, but they may charge you a surrender fee because they may consider the animal your’s at that point. You can keep if the animal, or you can find the animal a new home.
There are many reasons why an animal never gets reunited with the current home, and why nobody claims all the animals in shelters or kept in people’s homes. First, the animal has been on the road and missing for a long time, and the current people have stopped looking for the animal. If an animal is on the road for longer than one week, they will typically look “abandoned” or “mistreated.” They will look thin, dirty, scared and hesitant about approaching people. A person who finds this type of animal, typically misunderstands these signs that the animal has been abandoned, and if the animal has no ID, many finders won’t attempt to find the current home because they feel they don’t want to return the animal to a neglectful home.
Second, after becoming lost, the animal is taken into a new home, and then eventually gets loose from that home. Sometimes the old collar is removed, so now the animal is loose with no ID in an area they don’t know. The second home may not make an attempt to find the new animal, if they don’t have much of an attachment to the animal, or they feel the animal is going back to its previous home.
Third, sometimes animals are stolen from their own property, and taken far away. If they are released, get loose, or even confiscated from the person who stole them, they are now an animal that nobody knows anything about, and the old home is no longer looking for them.
Fourth, of course, there are people who do not look for their animals when they become lost, or they make a very basic attempt, and stop shortly after the animal is lost, assuming all kinds of things like somebody has picked them up and given them a new home, or the animal will find a new home on their own.
If somebody makes an attempt to catch the loose animal, but the animal runs and can not be confined and caught, there are three additional outcomes. Either the person makes an attempt to find the current home and relays the information to another party, or the person calls Animal Services to report the loose animal, or the person does nothing more and walks away. If the person want to do something further by helping the animal, they can search for Lost flyers in the area or place ads in Craigslist stating that they tried to help this animal and what happened and where it occurred. This is actually very helpful to the person searching for their animal because it gives them a point of reference to where their animal was last seen and whether the animal was responsive to people assisting them.
Calling Animal Services in response to a loose animal tends to vary according to the person who sees the animal, and the agencies in which the animal is loose. First, most agencies don’t respond to loose cats. The cat has to be confined in order for them to respond because, as everybody knows, it is very difficult to catch a loose and unconfined cat. Second, most agencies still respond to loose dogs, and will make a basic attempt to locate the animal. However, it is a low priority in the line up of calls if more urgent calls are waiting for a response. The other matter that affects whether Animal Services can respond to a loose dog is the time of day in which the call comes. Some larger and well-funded agencies still have an officer on duty 24 hours a day to respond to all calls. Some agencies will respond to only emergencies outside of normal business hours (typically Monday through Friday 8 AM to 5 PM) with an officer “on call,” meaning that the officer is at home with a pager, and will only respond to life threatening emergencies like animal bites, injured animals or animals causing a traffic hazard. Some agencies don’t even have an officer on duty to respond to any calls, whether they are emergencies or not, if the call comes in outside normal business hours.
Sometimes, if the person who sees the animal just calls the local shelter and informs the dispatcher about the loose animal, the shelter staff may be aware of a particular animal of that description missing in that area, and they can pass on the sighting to the person looking for that animal.
Another response to seeing a loose animal on the road is to do nothing at all, and generally the reasoning behind this response is because they don’t see anything wrong with the situation of an animal running loose. If the animal seen running loose is a cat, then most people won’t do anything about the situation and will let the cat go about its business with no response. Loose cats are so common in most communities that there is no alarm to seeing a cat running around.
On the other hand, if the animal seen running loose is a dog, and they decide not to catch the animal at that moment, there can be a variety of reasons for their response. I have found that people from certain cultures where dogs commonly run loose in the streets, have this type of non-response. Such cultures are Latin American countries like Mexico and countries in Central America, and people from India, Asia and the Middle East, also tend to do nothing because where they come from dogs are commonly seen running loose in the streets. In addition, rabies is a very common disease in these countries, so these people have learned to stay away from so called “street dogs” that commonly carry rabies. This fear will be brought over to the United States, and it will also be transferred from the parents to their children and from generation to generation.
A person’s past history with dogs will also guide their response when they see a loose dog on the street. If that person has had a negative interaction with dogs in the past, and is, thus, afraid of dogs, they will not approach any dog they do not know, and are probably hesitant around dogs they do know. Even if the person has not had a negative experience with dogs in the past, if they learn from their parents or grandparents, because of their parent’s past negative interaction with dogs, that all dogs are to be avoided and feared, this person will also have this fear and carry it with them without ever having a negative experience with dogs.
Another common reason why a person won’t attempt to catch a loose dog on the street is because they think the dog lives nearby, they don’t think the animal is lost, and that it is just wandering around. They may tell the dog in a harsh tone “Go home!” or “Shoo!” and the animal scurries away, so they think the animal is going home, when actually they scared the animal away.
