Set Up Email Alerts from Shelter Software Systems to Help Locate Your Missing Pet

When your pet goes missing you want to be sure that you use every available tool at your disposal to help you. Thankfully, technology has made some great leaps and bounds in recent years and today we want to tell you about three different search features you’ll want to use.

24 Pet Connect (formerly Pet Harbor) is a shelter software system used by many of the large animal control facilites in North America. You can search the listings manually for your lost pet but better yet, you can register to receive emails every time a possible match for your pet is entered into the system. You can filter these results by distance, animal type, breed, gender, age, size and color.

Adopt a Pet, an online adoption tool used by shelters, has a similar feature. Enter the description details about your missing pet and you will be sent an email notification when there is a possible match to your criteria. Adjust the distance filter in case your missing pet ends up in a shelter or rescue far away from home. Remember pets can travel or be transported a long distance and you wouldn’t want to miss a possible match.

Petfinder, another online adoption tool utilized by shelters, doesn’t currently have an email alert system but you can save your search, bookmark the page and then set yourself a reminder to check frequently to see if there is a possible match to your pet.

Make sure if you set up these email alert systems that you add them to your “approved senders” list so that they don’t get caught in your email’s spam filter.

Of course, computer-made matches shouldn’t substitute for calling and visiting the shelters in person, but they can be a very useful tool, especially to scan shelters far away or for searches which go on for months or years.