I have an animal showing on Petco Love Lost that is not actually "found" or a stray, can you tell me why it is showing?

We make all animals searchable as “found” with a few exceptions, such as cruelty cases.

Our data inclusion policy is intentionally broad in order to give lost pets the best possible chance at making it home. Unfortunately, lost pet data feeds are very inconsistent among shelter software platforms, which limits our ability to narrow the data feeds.

The short explanation is we believe that every owner should be able to find their lost pet, regardless of current status. To accomplish this goal, we encourage partners to share all animal intake photos and information, with minimal exception. The intake status at the time a pet enters an organization may or may not be indicative of what happened to the pet before entering the database.

We understand your pets may have come from another organization and/or they have already completed their stray hold; that in itself is another reason we think it is important to give owners every chance to find their lost pet, regardless of their current status (adoptable, transfer-in, etc.).

Because they were posted as a stray for five or so days (or whatever the stray hold is in that jurisdiction), it doesn’t mean the owner actually had adequate time or means to find their lost pet. Imagine you are the owner who shows up to the shelter on day six to look for your animal, and that pet has been transferred to another shelter or rescue: the only way you’ll have a chance to find that animal now is through Petco Love Lost.

Maybe you have an owner surrender their pet and tell you they’ve had the dog for a year, then an original owner sees their pet – who’s been missing for over a year -- on Petco Love Lost. Even though that dog is no longer technically a stray, wouldn’t the goal be to get them back to their original owner? Situations like this happen all the time. And remember: we have many organizations just like yours on Petco Love Lost that have had great success in reuniting pets with families.

Please click here to view a  more detailed explanation of our Data Inclusion Policy.

By including as many pets as possible in the database, we're aiming to eliminate all barriers that could prevent lost pets from returning home.