John and Mary Rueckert's Heart O'Gold Shetland Sheepdogs


			Key things to do when your dog gets lost! Immediately contact as many sympathetic relatives and friends as you can find to help search the area where the dog was lost. Your chances for quick recovery are best immediately after it runs away because you know the general area where it is. The more people looking, the better the chance of recovery before the dog widens its range of travel. As you search, tell neighbors, service and utility workers, contractors, hunters, and postal workers to keep an eye out for the dog. Have a picture of the dog to show them. Nothing is worse than spending your time following up on leads that turn out not to be your dog. Give all contacts your home and work phone numbers and tell them not to chase the dog if they see it, but to call you immediately. Strangers rarely catch lost dogs and chasing them makes them more scared, may force them into traffic or worse yet away from the area where they were sited. As hard as it is, one person should always stay at the phone contact point (usually home) to coordinate contacts and receive calls on sightings. The use of cellular, portable, or handheld phones by searchers allows for regular check in and quick responses when a dog is sighted. After being lost for a few days, most dogs settle into a routine in a specific area. So sightings become critical in order to know where to look. Regular sightings in the same general area indicate where to set up your trap. The use of several traps can improve your chances of recovering the dog. For a novel, effective, and inexpensive way to obtain multiple traps for use in a relatively short period of time, please see our free plans for a crate trap. This is especially effective if your dog is crate trained and the crate has a familiar look and smell, and it is not threatening like a commercial trap might be. If you find your dog, but can not catch it, get down on its level. I mean hands and knees. Lay on your stomach if you have to. Always have food with you. Food can make a big difference if the dog is very hungry. If your dog is obedience trained, softly tell it to sit and stay. This is not single command like in training. Repeat these commands as long as the dog responds to them, even if they keep breaking and moving away. Stay calm and what ever you do, do not get over emotional, show anger, or frustration. If they run away from you, don't chase them (as much as you might want to) for all the reasons previously mentioned. Immediately get your crate trap and set it up right there. It is your best chance to recover your dog. Set your crate trap whenever you know the area where the dog is. If your dog is crate trained the sight and smell of their kennel crate will be familiar to them in an otherwise hostile environment. Scatter a few treats around the area where you set up the crate trap. This will keep the dog searching the general area. Don't leave to many treats, as you want the dog hungry when they locate the trap. Use bedding blankets, or towels that have scents on them that the dog is familiar with as described under 'setting the trap'. These scents could be your scent, the dog's own scent, or the scent of other dogs in your kennel, or home. Welcome snowfall. This is an opportunity to track your dog. Get out early when the snow is new, before melting, other animals, and other people make tracking more difficult. Tracking can tell you where your dog is, where they go, what they eat, where they drink, and where they sleep. Don't miss this chance if you get it, and set your crate trap at the best locations. For example, try to set the trap near where the dog has been nesting, but before they get to where they eat, so they are not full when they get to the crate trap. Offer a reward only after the dog has been gone 2 to 3 weeks, not before. If you decide to do this, make sure you offer enough to bring 'kidnappers' out of the woodwork. Generally, this is about 1-1/2 times the cost of a puppy sale for your breed, in the area where the dog is lost. Be prepared to hold your tongue when the phone rings. If you don't you may never see your dog again. Always get a caller's name, location, and phone number, if possible. If they have a sighting, ask them if they would mind showing you exactly where they saw the dog and which way it was heading. This increases the chances of recovery and reduces mistakes. Be sure to ask if the dog seemed ok. This information is important to your mental well being. Good luck! Hang in there no matter what is going on. Dogs are very adaptable and can survive in primitive situations much better than their owners generally give them credit for. Our experience has been that those who do things right, as detailed above, have a very high rate of recovery.
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