Lost Dog Checklist

Start Immediately!

• Search your neighborhood, walking slowly, calling your dog. The best times may be late in the evening or early in the morning when streets are quiet and the dog may come out of hiding. Check basements, closets, attics, garages, other out of the way places, and under houses and bushes.
• If your dog has a dog buddy, bring the dog buddy along when you are looking.
• If the lost dog is a male, particularly an intact male, if you can find a bitch in season, the dog may be attracted to her.
• Contact BR-NC.
• Notify every animal shelter in a wide radius and go in personally every day, even multiple times a day. You MUST check IN PERSON and insist on looking at all their found dogs. Don't depend on shelters to call you or on verbal descriptions, even at the shelter counter, to identify your Borzoi!
• Leave food and clothes or blanket with your scent on it near where the dog was last seen or where the dog escaped from your yard.
• Carry an extra cell phone battery.

If Your Dog Is Still Missing on Day Two

• Offer a Reward.
• Make posters with a large photo, a brief description of the Borzoi, and your phone number in large, clear letters. Include Reward information. Do NOT include your name and street address. Make sure all posters can be easily read from a passing car.
• Use a description and colors that non-Borzoi people will recognize – such as, “large, shaggy dog resembling a Greyhound with hair” and “brown spots on white” rather than “dilute red on white.”
• Always withhold several identifying marks. You may need these later to verify that someone has actually found your pet.
• Put the posters up everywhere. Lost Borzoi can easily travel several miles. Post in a 20-block area to start. Ask permission to post in pet stores, feed stores, grocery stores, gas stations and other busy locations, and remove posters when you find your animal.
• Leave posters at all veterinarians, animal emergency clinics, and shelters.
• Place a Lost Pet ad in the local newspapers and in the newspapers of surrounding communities.
• If you've moved recently, look in your old neighborhood and post lost notices there, too. Ask your former neighbors to be on the lookout for your dog.
• Contact utility workers, local law, newsboys, postmen, road construction and maintenance workers, etc. – people who are out on the street daily.
• Consider notifying schools and ask the administration to put up posters and ask the children to be on the alert. If you can get a poster to the bus barn so the school bus drivers can see it, they cover a lot of territory.
• Go to nearby communities, as well, and expand the poster exposure.
• Check back frequently with folks to whom you have given posters and with whom you have talked.
• Try to locate a trained tracking dog. You may have to cry, beg and plead. People do not like to use their dogs on other dogs because it confuses them for searching for people, bur if you BEG, they will usually help.
• People on horseback are helpful also. Bring other dogs with you if at all possible. If you have a dog you can trust off lead, use the trained dog in the hunt. A dog will come to another dog and the trained one can be called in and likely the lost dog will follow for treats.
• Find out if your dog has been killed on the road. This is a sad but necessary task. Otherwise you may never know what happened to your pet. Road crews for your local and state department of transportation usually pick up dead animals from the roadside. Call around to find out which agencies do this service in your area. Speak to them face to face and bring a photo of your pet for distribution to road crews.
• DO NOT STOP LOOKING!!! Borzoi will sometimes go feral very quickly particularly if loose in a rural area. Some are having fun!! Remember, they can feed themselves. Others are truly lost and want nothing more than to find their owners, at least once the thrill is over. Keep in mind that people often keep an animal for several days or even weeks, hoping to find the owner, before turning it in to a shelter.

Cautions

• Talking directly to children can be touchy. This is often a ploy used by child molesters/abductors. Limit your conversations to adults concerning a lost dog.
• Never responds to a found contact alone unless you know the person already.
• Beware of money and other scams. A common scam is a person who calls claiming to be a long-haul trucker. He says he picked up your pet and is out of state now. He heard about your ad, flyer, etc. and says he will return your dog if you will pay to ship it home.