A Handy List of Lost Dog Links & Resources:
1. Lost Dogs of America Website
2. PawBoost (online lost poster service/faxes to area shelters & vet clinics)
3. Finding & Capturing A Lost Sighthound
4. NextDoor
5. 24 Pet Connect [FKA Pet Harbor] (Search Area Shelters Online & Post Your Lost Pet)
6. Helping Lost Pets (online clearing house of lost/found pet reporting, free flyer creator, etc)
1. Lost Dogs of America Website
- Tips for Catching a Shy Dog (from Lost Dogs of America)
- Five Things To Do If You've Lost Your Dog (from Lost Dogs of America)
- How To Increase Your Lost Pet's Social Media Post Reach (from Lost Dogs of America)
- Use of & Success With a Humane Trap (from Lost Dogs of America)
- How to Set Up a Feeding Station/Use of Trail Cameras (from Lost Dogs of America)
2. PawBoost (online lost poster service/faxes to area shelters & vet clinics)
3. Finding & Capturing A Lost Sighthound
4. NextDoor
5. 24 Pet Connect [FKA Pet Harbor] (Search Area Shelters Online & Post Your Lost Pet)
6. Helping Lost Pets (online clearing house of lost/found pet reporting, free flyer creator, etc)
Lost whippet! These two words chill the hearts of all whippet owners. Our breed is very fast, very prey driven, and can also be sometimes skittish and sensitive to noises, a combination that can lead to their bolting off or getting lost. New pets and rescues are often in the most in danger of being lost, but occasionally even our long time companions can take advantage of a broken fence board or a door left open and are off.
The First 24 Hours are Critical
When a whippet is lost, the first 24 hours after their disappearance is critical. Statistics show that the vast majority of lost dogs are recovered in the first day day after their loss, often because they are still close to home at this point and can often be recovered by their owner, or lured by a Good Samaritan with a tasty treat into a nearby backyard or even a car. In the case of a whippet, they have not yet had the opportunity to “go feral”, which is when the dog reverts back to a semi-wild state, and cannot be lured by food or even recognize their people (this is probably a remnant of an ancient self-preservation mode that seems to be especially strong in sighthounds and usually kicks in after about four or five days of being lost).
Once you realize your whippet is missing or have been notified that a whippet you bred or a rescue you rehomed has been lost, getting boots on the ground immediately to post flyers is the first priority. This is not the time to worry about if your peers, your breeder, or your dog friends will judge you and find you negligent for losing your hound nor is it the time to realize that your puppy buyers are too afraid to share this news with you - you’ve got to suck it up buttercup and tell the world your hound is missing.
Signs find lost dogs! Signs, both paper ones for posting & mailbox stuffing in the area, and an online one for posting on Social Media, should be made up immediately. If you do not have any good photos of your whippet, a fellow whipper owner can provide shots of a similarly marked hound to use or you can snip the image of a similar looking whippet from the internet. Photos of the lost whippet, the vital facts of their disappearance (when and where) and your contact info should be easily visible on the flyer. Offering a reward is controversial, but the thought of collecting a reward can often tip a person who maybe was going to keep that skinny dog they found into returning it. It is important to note on your sign that finders SHOULD NOT CHASE the whippet, as we all know that this can cause a hound to spook into danger, and even the most enfeebled whippet can outrun a human.
Large, brightly colored posters can be quickly made up for street corner postings; these can omit the photos and just share the vital facts – LOST DOG! WHIPPET, LIKE A SMALL GREYHOUND. A whippet silhouette can be visually arresting on these large format posters.
Your search party should immediately start canvassing the area the whippet was lost from, posting signs and going door to door. This is the way they can gather intel from your neighbors on if your dog was seen, what direction they were going, etc. People often will not take the time to call the number on a sign, but if they are asked directly, in person, they can share important information. Don’t forget to leave your gate open if this is the way your hound got out, as they often will come right back in once they’ve had a nice jaunt around the neighborhood. You should place an open crate at the area the dog was lost from, with several personal items of yours inside. Dirty socks or underwear work well to lure the hound back to where it was lost from.
Social Media & The Internet
We love to hate social media, but it is here to stay and it is truly a wonderful tool in the case of a lost whippet. Where back in the day we could only rely on phone trees or posting signs at street corners, now we are all just a few keystrokes away from telling the world about our lost hound. The Lost Sign should be posted to your Facebook page, your friend’s pages, the NCWFA page and also the WRAP page, as well as the social media pages of the shelters and humane societies in your area. There are lost pet pages for most areas now that you can post to, and some of these are incredibly active. Don’t forget to cruise these pages often, as people post found pets on there as well, and your whippet may very well be posted by their finder to one of these pages. The great thing about Social Media is that you do not have to be in the same town or even the same country as the lost whippet to post, so this is a good job for someone who is further away from the situation but still wants to help.
You may wish to start a dedicated Facebook Page for your lost whippet. The “Find Goya” page became a vital clearing house and hub for information, sightings, etc. and really aided getting the word out when Goya was lost.
www.pawboost.com is an online version of Sherlock Bones (remember them?) They make an online lost poster for your hound, and this is distributed to the thousands of people who have signed up for their alerts. More importantly, Pawboost will fax this poster to all the vet offices, shelters, and boarding kennels in the area. This can prove invaluable, and as those fax numbers are often hard to find for we civilians, well worth the $45 fee. Helping Lost Pets is another country-wide online network that will notify all it's members about your lost whippet, as well as having a great flyer-generator available for your use.
The neighborhood internet list at www.nextdoor.com is a great resource for getting the word out in your hood. Craigslist should also be posted to (in the Lost and Found section, as well as in Pets) and these should be re-posted every few days, to keep your hound at the top of the page. Your local newspaper often has an online edition and posting to their Lost and Found listing should also be done. Your lost hound can be registered on www.24PetConnect.com, which is where most of the animal shelters post their found and impounded dogs. This page gets a ton of traffic from shelters and just average people who may have found a dog, so this is a good place to put your whippet’s info. Plus, it’s free!
Day Two & Beyond
Don’t despair if your whippet is not found within the first 24 hours. There are many notable stories of whippets that were recovered after days, months, and even years lost. Our breed is very hardy and resourceful and they can often live a lot longer on the lam than other “tougher” breeds, so don’t lose hope. This is the time, however, when you must swing into the next phase of your search. Keep up your social media postings, updating with any sightings you receive and keep posting to Craigslist and Nextdoor. Repetition is key, and sometimes it’s that twentieth post that will jog the memory of someone who has seen your dog. There are plenty of dog loving news reporters (and even a few who own whippets themselves) who have Facebook pages or channel websites, so check with them to see if they can post your lost flyer, or maybe even do a human interest story about your lost whippet.
Someone on your search team should really be visiting the local animal shelters daily or bi-weekly to walk the intake kennels looking for your hound, as well as checking the distastefully named “DOA Book” (which is where photos of the animals that are picked up dead from the roads are kept). Shelters are busy places and are often understaffed, so do not rely on your whippet being posted to 24PetConnect.com if they are picked up. Shelters will often miss a migrated microchip, so they may not know that your hound is chipped. Injured dogs are often not posted to 24PetConnect and of course those that are picked up dead are only to be found in the DOA book.
Whippets most often seem to “go to ground” within a few days of being lost. Sightings may slow or the dog may not be seen at all. Don’t freak out, because most lost whippets seem to locate a quiet place to hide during daylight hours, which is close to water and food, where they cannot be seen, even by the most diligent seekers. Still have searchers walk the area the dog was lost, as well as the areas of any sightings and post updated or new signs. Whippet tagalongs are useful visual aids to have with you when searching, because even though we live and breathe whippet, many people have no idea what they look like. Remember your aim is probably not to find your dog during these searches, as they are most likely in hiding, but to raise awareness of their being missing. It is of the utmost importance during this phase of the search, to keep up your emphasis on how people must not chase the whippet if they see it, but to report all and any sightings immediately to you and your team. It is human nature to chase that skinny dog, and it is absolutely the 100% worst thing any one can do, so keep being the broken record about this!
You may want to consider using an animal tracker to find your whippet. There are several teams that work locally and I personally have heard of some amazing recoveries by the trackers. If you are going to use this option, don’t wait too long, as the scent trails go stale after about seven days, less if it is dry weather.
If you get repeated sightings in the same area it might be time to think about setting a humane trap to catch your whippet. As I said earlier, whippets often find a location close to water and a food source and hide out there, and they go feral after about a week of being lost, so setting a trap could be the only way to catch them. NCWFA owns the coyote-sized humane trap used for catching a whippet and we are happy to loan it out to anyone who might need it. Trap setting can be tricky and there is a true art to doing it and doing it right, so please take advantage of the knowledge of those who have done it before.
What To Do When You Locate The Lost Whippet
Whippets are unique in that they can run at speeds of upwards of 30 miles per hour and also that the flight reaction is very strong in them. This is why it is imperative to not lunge or chase after a free running hound. Even an elderly whippet can outrun you and their slick coat and lithe physique makes them very difficult to grab and hold on to. They can hear far better than us and being sighthounds can of course see better than we can. It is impossible to sneak up on a whippet, as they will hear you coming like a herd of elephants, even though you are being as quiet as you can be. You have to change your mindset from chasing or following the dog, as this will surely scare the dog and send them right into danger.
If you can, call the owner, while keeping the hound in sight. Do not approach, lunge at, or chase after the whippet, as you will surely not be able to catch them if they begin to run, and you may very well cause the dog to spook into traffic. The owner is the person who is going to be best able to call the whippet to them. If there are a group of you and you can safely herd the whippet into an enclosed area, you can range into a semi-circle around the dog and slowly walk towards it, backing it into a securely fenced area. Note that whippets have been known to jump eight foot fences with ease, so unless the fences are very high and unclimbable, it is best to not try this option.
So what to do if you are face to face with the missing whippet and the owner is many minutes away? Sit or lie on the ground and call the dog to you in a quiet, even voice. If you have treats with you, begin tossing them in the dog’s direction, throwing them ever closer to you, luring the hound towards you slowly. This process can take many minutes – do not force it. Once the whippet is quite close to you, try to toss a leash over their head or make a grab for them. Know you will not get a second chance to do this, so be sure they are truly as close to you as possible before you make your move.
The First 24 Hours are Critical
When a whippet is lost, the first 24 hours after their disappearance is critical. Statistics show that the vast majority of lost dogs are recovered in the first day day after their loss, often because they are still close to home at this point and can often be recovered by their owner, or lured by a Good Samaritan with a tasty treat into a nearby backyard or even a car. In the case of a whippet, they have not yet had the opportunity to “go feral”, which is when the dog reverts back to a semi-wild state, and cannot be lured by food or even recognize their people (this is probably a remnant of an ancient self-preservation mode that seems to be especially strong in sighthounds and usually kicks in after about four or five days of being lost).
Once you realize your whippet is missing or have been notified that a whippet you bred or a rescue you rehomed has been lost, getting boots on the ground immediately to post flyers is the first priority. This is not the time to worry about if your peers, your breeder, or your dog friends will judge you and find you negligent for losing your hound nor is it the time to realize that your puppy buyers are too afraid to share this news with you - you’ve got to suck it up buttercup and tell the world your hound is missing.
Signs find lost dogs! Signs, both paper ones for posting & mailbox stuffing in the area, and an online one for posting on Social Media, should be made up immediately. If you do not have any good photos of your whippet, a fellow whipper owner can provide shots of a similarly marked hound to use or you can snip the image of a similar looking whippet from the internet. Photos of the lost whippet, the vital facts of their disappearance (when and where) and your contact info should be easily visible on the flyer. Offering a reward is controversial, but the thought of collecting a reward can often tip a person who maybe was going to keep that skinny dog they found into returning it. It is important to note on your sign that finders SHOULD NOT CHASE the whippet, as we all know that this can cause a hound to spook into danger, and even the most enfeebled whippet can outrun a human.
Large, brightly colored posters can be quickly made up for street corner postings; these can omit the photos and just share the vital facts – LOST DOG! WHIPPET, LIKE A SMALL GREYHOUND. A whippet silhouette can be visually arresting on these large format posters.
Your search party should immediately start canvassing the area the whippet was lost from, posting signs and going door to door. This is the way they can gather intel from your neighbors on if your dog was seen, what direction they were going, etc. People often will not take the time to call the number on a sign, but if they are asked directly, in person, they can share important information. Don’t forget to leave your gate open if this is the way your hound got out, as they often will come right back in once they’ve had a nice jaunt around the neighborhood. You should place an open crate at the area the dog was lost from, with several personal items of yours inside. Dirty socks or underwear work well to lure the hound back to where it was lost from.
Social Media & The Internet
We love to hate social media, but it is here to stay and it is truly a wonderful tool in the case of a lost whippet. Where back in the day we could only rely on phone trees or posting signs at street corners, now we are all just a few keystrokes away from telling the world about our lost hound. The Lost Sign should be posted to your Facebook page, your friend’s pages, the NCWFA page and also the WRAP page, as well as the social media pages of the shelters and humane societies in your area. There are lost pet pages for most areas now that you can post to, and some of these are incredibly active. Don’t forget to cruise these pages often, as people post found pets on there as well, and your whippet may very well be posted by their finder to one of these pages. The great thing about Social Media is that you do not have to be in the same town or even the same country as the lost whippet to post, so this is a good job for someone who is further away from the situation but still wants to help.
You may wish to start a dedicated Facebook Page for your lost whippet. The “Find Goya” page became a vital clearing house and hub for information, sightings, etc. and really aided getting the word out when Goya was lost.
www.pawboost.com is an online version of Sherlock Bones (remember them?) They make an online lost poster for your hound, and this is distributed to the thousands of people who have signed up for their alerts. More importantly, Pawboost will fax this poster to all the vet offices, shelters, and boarding kennels in the area. This can prove invaluable, and as those fax numbers are often hard to find for we civilians, well worth the $45 fee. Helping Lost Pets is another country-wide online network that will notify all it's members about your lost whippet, as well as having a great flyer-generator available for your use.
The neighborhood internet list at www.nextdoor.com is a great resource for getting the word out in your hood. Craigslist should also be posted to (in the Lost and Found section, as well as in Pets) and these should be re-posted every few days, to keep your hound at the top of the page. Your local newspaper often has an online edition and posting to their Lost and Found listing should also be done. Your lost hound can be registered on www.24PetConnect.com, which is where most of the animal shelters post their found and impounded dogs. This page gets a ton of traffic from shelters and just average people who may have found a dog, so this is a good place to put your whippet’s info. Plus, it’s free!
Day Two & Beyond
Don’t despair if your whippet is not found within the first 24 hours. There are many notable stories of whippets that were recovered after days, months, and even years lost. Our breed is very hardy and resourceful and they can often live a lot longer on the lam than other “tougher” breeds, so don’t lose hope. This is the time, however, when you must swing into the next phase of your search. Keep up your social media postings, updating with any sightings you receive and keep posting to Craigslist and Nextdoor. Repetition is key, and sometimes it’s that twentieth post that will jog the memory of someone who has seen your dog. There are plenty of dog loving news reporters (and even a few who own whippets themselves) who have Facebook pages or channel websites, so check with them to see if they can post your lost flyer, or maybe even do a human interest story about your lost whippet.
Someone on your search team should really be visiting the local animal shelters daily or bi-weekly to walk the intake kennels looking for your hound, as well as checking the distastefully named “DOA Book” (which is where photos of the animals that are picked up dead from the roads are kept). Shelters are busy places and are often understaffed, so do not rely on your whippet being posted to 24PetConnect.com if they are picked up. Shelters will often miss a migrated microchip, so they may not know that your hound is chipped. Injured dogs are often not posted to 24PetConnect and of course those that are picked up dead are only to be found in the DOA book.
Whippets most often seem to “go to ground” within a few days of being lost. Sightings may slow or the dog may not be seen at all. Don’t freak out, because most lost whippets seem to locate a quiet place to hide during daylight hours, which is close to water and food, where they cannot be seen, even by the most diligent seekers. Still have searchers walk the area the dog was lost, as well as the areas of any sightings and post updated or new signs. Whippet tagalongs are useful visual aids to have with you when searching, because even though we live and breathe whippet, many people have no idea what they look like. Remember your aim is probably not to find your dog during these searches, as they are most likely in hiding, but to raise awareness of their being missing. It is of the utmost importance during this phase of the search, to keep up your emphasis on how people must not chase the whippet if they see it, but to report all and any sightings immediately to you and your team. It is human nature to chase that skinny dog, and it is absolutely the 100% worst thing any one can do, so keep being the broken record about this!
You may want to consider using an animal tracker to find your whippet. There are several teams that work locally and I personally have heard of some amazing recoveries by the trackers. If you are going to use this option, don’t wait too long, as the scent trails go stale after about seven days, less if it is dry weather.
If you get repeated sightings in the same area it might be time to think about setting a humane trap to catch your whippet. As I said earlier, whippets often find a location close to water and a food source and hide out there, and they go feral after about a week of being lost, so setting a trap could be the only way to catch them. NCWFA owns the coyote-sized humane trap used for catching a whippet and we are happy to loan it out to anyone who might need it. Trap setting can be tricky and there is a true art to doing it and doing it right, so please take advantage of the knowledge of those who have done it before.
What To Do When You Locate The Lost Whippet
Whippets are unique in that they can run at speeds of upwards of 30 miles per hour and also that the flight reaction is very strong in them. This is why it is imperative to not lunge or chase after a free running hound. Even an elderly whippet can outrun you and their slick coat and lithe physique makes them very difficult to grab and hold on to. They can hear far better than us and being sighthounds can of course see better than we can. It is impossible to sneak up on a whippet, as they will hear you coming like a herd of elephants, even though you are being as quiet as you can be. You have to change your mindset from chasing or following the dog, as this will surely scare the dog and send them right into danger.
If you can, call the owner, while keeping the hound in sight. Do not approach, lunge at, or chase after the whippet, as you will surely not be able to catch them if they begin to run, and you may very well cause the dog to spook into traffic. The owner is the person who is going to be best able to call the whippet to them. If there are a group of you and you can safely herd the whippet into an enclosed area, you can range into a semi-circle around the dog and slowly walk towards it, backing it into a securely fenced area. Note that whippets have been known to jump eight foot fences with ease, so unless the fences are very high and unclimbable, it is best to not try this option.
So what to do if you are face to face with the missing whippet and the owner is many minutes away? Sit or lie on the ground and call the dog to you in a quiet, even voice. If you have treats with you, begin tossing them in the dog’s direction, throwing them ever closer to you, luring the hound towards you slowly. This process can take many minutes – do not force it. Once the whippet is quite close to you, try to toss a leash over their head or make a grab for them. Know you will not get a second chance to do this, so be sure they are truly as close to you as possible before you make your move.