Losing a pet can be a frightening and heartbreaking experience. Fortunately, there are many available resources out there to help get your best friend back. Here is a list of tips to help you out in the event of a lost pet:

 

1. Contact local animal shelters and animal control agencies such as your local humane society
2. Search the neighborhood
3. Advertise with fliers or Internet posts
4. Be wary of pet-recovery scams
5. Don't give up your search

In need of some motivation to continue the search? Here are a few incredible, true stories of lost dogs and their journeys back to their owners. 

One pup, Australian Cattle Dog named Sophie, went on a death-defying odyssey of her own, one that took her from the shark-infested waters off the coast of Queensland, Australia, to a remote island where she survived for four months by hunting goats and evading predators. How did she get here, you ask?

Sophie was enjoying a day out on the boat with her family, when she fell overboard into choppy waters and disappeared. Her owners spent the rest of the day searching for her, but eventually came to believe that the wake of the boat had overpowered their pup. Turns out that Sophie was quite a prodigious swimmer, in fact, and had paddled five miles to St. Bee’s Island. Nearly half a year later, local rangers captured her, and she was reunited with her family who had reached out to the rangers after hearing the story in the news. And so concludes the best episode of Survivor ever.

One of the more humorous lost and found stories involves a dog named Holly, so named because she was adopted over Christmas. One spring day, while her family was doing yard work, Holly, a friendly black lab, set out to roam the wooded acres behind her house. It had become one of her favorite pastimes over the past five years. While she was at the edge of the property, a man drove by in a pickup truck and, assuming she had wandered from home, picked Holly up and put her in his car with the intention of either rescuing her, or returning her to her owners. “It was almost closing time at the dump, and he wanted to get there on time, so he just took her for the ride,” recalls Kim, Holly’s owner. Once he got there and inspected her collar, however, he realized that the address on her tags was in fact the location where he had picked her up. Both Holly and her chauffeur returned with their tails between their legs later that day.

Here are some resouces to further help you in the event of a lost pet.

Atlanta Atlanta Humane Society: 404-875-5331

Fulton Animal Control: 404-613-0358

Check out the new Unleashed Episode for more tips!