Lost & Found

Lost and Found Animals

Have you lost your lifelong companion or found someone else’s companion?

As you know, losing an animal is traumatic

Lost Animals

A pet can go missing within seconds

What to do if your pet goes missing

  • Contact your local SPCA, other SPCA’s close to the area your pet went missing. Contact shelters and vets in your area.
  • Provide a full detailed description of your lost pet. A photo must be submitted as well. It is much easier to identify a lost pets out of hundreds of pets if a photo is available. To owner each pet is individual, unique, and recognisable but in a SPCA we see hundreds of animals, some breeds- especially mixed breeds, it is difficult to identify them from a verbal description, especially when there may be multiple similar animals in the kennels. A recent photo of the lost pet helps the SPCA staff reunite lost pets with their owners.
  • Visit all your local SPCA’s and other shelters regularly.

A frightened animal may run a considerable distance or may have been picked up and then released in a different area. Someone unfamiliar with your area may pick up a lost animal and not know the area where it was found.

 

  • Place a lost advert in the local newspaper – do not insert the gender or age or unique identifying marks of the animal.
  • Put ads on notice boards, at shopping centres, on notice boards in complexes anywhere and everywhere.

NB: Domestic animals which are used to being cared for can and do deteriorate in condition very quickly. A fat well-groomed lost pet can look completely different after a few weeks of roaming the streets. Check in person to preclude that your pet has not been overlooked due to any variance in description due to condition.

  • Owners of lost pets must undertake to come to the SPCA as soon as possible and regularly thereafter to check if their missing pet has been brought in.

Once a pet has been found please notify the SPCA’s.

The first thing a pet owner must do when their pet is returned to them is to ensure a microchip is implanted in the pet, a collar and ID disc are placed around the pet’s neck. Identification is the voice for a lost pet.

Please remember providing a “Lost-and-Found” service is not a core function of any SPCA. It is the pet’s owner’s responsibility to check and recheck all establishments where lost pets may be kept until they find their pet.

Found Animals

Contact the local animal pound where the pet was found, it may be your local SPCA.

Provide them with a detailed description, and preferably submit a photo of the found pet.

Found pets must be reported to the Municipal Animal Pound/SPCA.

If you are not handing over the found animal to the animal Pound/ SPCA take it to a vet at your expense for a health check and to ascertain if it has a microchip. You are responsible for all veterinary and feeding costs if you choose to hold the animal. Find out the requirement according to the Municipal Animal By-Laws if you intend not to hand the found pet into the Pound.

Place a found advert in the local newspaper – do not insert the gender or age or unique identifying marks of the animal; let the caller tell you what these are.

Put ads on notice boards.