New Group Connecting Lost and Found Dogs with Families

The first line on a missing flyer for Sammy, a 5-year-old beagle/shepherd mix was short and worrisome.

**Hit by Vehicle - May be injured**

Around 10 p.m. on Jan. 6, Sammy went out into his yard in Needham to use the bathroom. He wandered to the front yard and into the street, where he was hit by a car. Frightened, Sammy took off.

Despite the night’s frigid 14-degree weather, Sammy’s family spent three hours, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., searching for him.

“We couldn’t sleep,” Sammy’s mom Tonya Grace said. When they couldn’t find him, she took to social media asking for help. A few Facebook posts and suggestions from friends later, she stumbled upon Missing Dogs Massachusetts.

Staff from the site, which started operating on Jan. 1, gave Sammy’s family tips to find him, such as putting a call to the community out on findtoto.com. They also created a missing flyer for Sammy and asked volunteers to help them paper the area where the dog went missing.

That same flyer went up on Missing Dogs Massachusetts’s Facebook page, where it was shared 50 times.

“They’re so caring,” Grace said about the group’s efforts. “They’re using their own time and money to do that and they don’t have to. They were really right out there and working hard for me.”

Less than a day after he went missing, on Jan. 7 at 5:44 p.m., the group posted that Sammy had been found and was on his way to the vet to get his foot bandaged. He had a cut on his front-right paw, but no broken bones.

Sammy is now happy and warm back with his family. With tear-filled eyes, Grace said the help she and her family got from Missing Dogs Massachusetts “really moved us.”

16 Reunions in a Week

And her story isn’t rare. In the one week they’ve been operating, Missing Dogs Massachusetts has reunited 16 lost dogs with their families. That’s roughly two dogs every day.

The group sprouted out of a larger site, Granite State Dog Recovery, which posts about lost and found dogs throughout New England.

Board members and volunteers from Granite State Dog Recovery noticed a need to focus on dogs missing in Massachusetts after “seeing literally thousands of dogs missing,” Beth Corr, president Missing Dogs Massachusetts’s Board, said in a video posted to the website.

Included in the eight volunteers who currently make up Missing Dog Massachusetts’ board are a retired state police member, an animal control officer and a former president of an animal rescue group. Corr runs a kennel service and homemade dog biscuit line in Newton called Wag Tail Farms.

Corr and other members of Missing Dogs Massachusetts use vast networks on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to reunite families with their missing dogs. The organization has gained 6,900 Facebook followers in the seven days they’ve been operational.

They post pictures and flyers of missing and found dogs, help frantic pet parents like Grace and sometimes help track and trap dogs who have been seen in Massachusetts.

The group, however, isn’t authorized to house dogs they’ve found. Instead, Missing Dogs Massachusetts partners with animal rescue groups like the Animal Rescue League of Boston and Paws New England to give the dogs a home until their owners are located.

“There’s really no greater joy than seeing a dog reunited with their family, or a family reunited with their dog,” Corr said.

Preventing Lost Dogs

In the future, Missing Dogs Massachusetts hopes to become not only a site people look toward to find missing dogs, but also an organization that keeps dogs from getting lost in the first place.

The number one problem people have when they lose a dog, according to Corr, is that they “haven’t foreseen being in this circumstance and don’t know what to do.”

The group wants to change that and “affect [dog loss] from the front end as well,” Corr said. Some ideas they have to accomplish this goal include working with pet supply stores and vets to educate new dog owners on loss prevention and to have volunteers microchip dogs before they are brought home.

But simply microchipping your dog isn’t enough, Corr said. Many people don’t realize that microchips have to be registered in order to be of use. Missing Dog Massachusetts volunteers would register the chip as soon as it is put in.

Missing Dogs Massachusetts also hopes to someday be able to lend humane trapping equipment to cities and dog owners throughout the state. The group envisions having equipment hubs across Massachusetts where volunteers trained in tracking and trapping dogs could help owners and residents who have seen a lost pup.

Despite big plans for the future, Corr and other members of the group are happy with the work they currently do reuniting lost dogs like Sammy with their families.

“If we can keep one dog out of the shelter system then we’ve done a great thing,” Corr said in the video.

To keep up with Missing Dogs Massachusetts, like the organization on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. You can also visit their website for more information about loss prevention and tips for recovering a lost dog.

image via Missing Dogs Massachusetts on Facebook

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