Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues making a difference in the lives of animals. Joining me today is Leslie Poole with pet fbi.org.

Hi Dixie.

Hi Leslie. Thank you for joining me today. I am excited to speak with you about pet fbi.org.

Yeah, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to talk about it.

Yeah. A couple of weeks ago we had, Jeanette Garlow, and she was with microchip help.com and Lost Dogs Illinois, and she said that you were her partner database, so that's why I thought it would be a good conversation.

Yeah. Yeah. We work very closely with them. They're one of our many partner groups across the United States and Canada.

That's awesome. So before we get started, tell me a little bit about yourself and how you became an animal advocate.

Yeah I grew up with pets we always had pets around the house. I raised my children to have pets and I was in the nonprofit world for many years as a fundraiser and a nonprofit administrator. I had the nonprofit background. But then as I started getting to the point where I was stepping back a little bit from that position the pet FBI thing came up and pet FBI was started in 1998. I didn't get involved until 2017. And it was actually my son that. Got me involved because he had started volunteering for PET FBI. And at the time, the executive director who was the founder, Marisa Fanelli, was getting ready to retire and was looking for somebody to step in and take her place. And so actually, my son put us in contact and I loved the organization, loved the mission. It was just felt like such a good fit. And so I stepped in as executive director.

Can you tell me a little bit about what the core mission is?

Yeah, absolutely. So our mission is to reunite lost pets with their families, and our goal is to do that always free of charge through our technology our expert information and the caring community of volunteers that we have. So we provide a free database where anybody can go online@petfpi.org and enter a lost or found PET report. When that report is entered, email alerts are sent out. It gets in our database, which is searchable, and then it's shared with all of our partner organizations and they share it to social media. And we have all of these fabulous volunteers like Jeanette and many others who reach out to those folks just to give them support and advice and help them find their lost pets.

How is it that you come across the partner organizations?

Yeah, so there was another organization called Helping Lost Pets, and they were based in Canada, and then there's another organization called Lost Dogs of America, and one called Lost Cats of America. And so we have all partnered together. It started with us partnering with helping Lost Pets, and they had a a very similar mission to ours, which was to provide a free database. And they had already collaborated with Lost Dogs of America and Lost Cats of America and all of their state groups. So when we started working with them, we just joined the family. And we worked with helping lost pets for several years. Collaborating with them and sharing our reports back and forth, and working with the partner groups. Then in 2021 when their director, Rob Goddard was ready to retire it just made sense to merge. So we merged with helping lost Pets at that point and brought it all under Pet FBI.

I love to hear that you were working with these other groups with the Helping Lost Pets and The Lost Cats of America and Lost Dogs of America. That's great that all work for the same goal.

Yeah, once we got to talking our missions were the same. And so there was no reason to be competitive. Let's all work together. The goal is to get lost pets back home, however we can do that. And working together just makes it so much more effective. And so much better for the people who are just struggling to find their pets.

Absolutely. So you said that the pet fbi.org first started in 1998. So how has it evolved I guess up to now from 1998? Like how were reports handled back then and how are they handled now, if you know that? Yeah.

Yeah. In 1998, it was very early days for the internet, so this was really one of the first online databases. And Marisa had worked with a local internet service provider here in Columbus, Ohio, which is where we are based. And it was just serving the central Ohio area at that time. So it was really a novel concept. In 1998, that was just the beginnings of people going online and posting. So it was more of a bulletin board kind of thing. At that point. And then it's just as technology has evolved, it's grown and evolved. So it started growing to serve all of Ohio and then went from there to be, serving all of the United States and Canada at this point. But yeah, as technology has grown, we've grown as well.

Now with your platform, are there paid services or is everything on your platform free of charge?

Everything we do is free of charge. So we are a 5 0 1 C3. We're a nonprofit organization. We are completely supported by donations. So if somebody marks their report as reunited, their pet is back home. We do ask if they wanna pay it forward and make a donation. But there is no fee to do anything on our site so anybody can report a pet for completely free of charge and they get the same service no matter what.

The donations that you receive, what do you use that for?

Yeah, it mostly goes toward our technology costs. Hosting the platform, sending emails sending text messages. There's just a lot of things that go into supporting the technology that we use. That's basically what it goes for. We also have a Good Sam fund where we. We'll help shelters, we'll help owners out if they can't pay a shelter, reclaim fee. We also donate microchip scanners to police departments and things like that. But the bulk of it goes to supporting our technology,

and I could imagine that can get costly as well, just maintaining the database.

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And sending emails. We send an incredible amount of emails on both potential match alerts and anybody can go on our site and sign up to receive emails of lost and found pets in their area. So yeah, all of those things that you don't think about add up. That's why we need those donations and we're very fortunate that people are generous and donate to us.

So since there is a lot of tech involved, I would imagine that, do you have an IT person that you work with as well?

We do. It's actually my son. Oh, okay. Who built the database?

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. We don't have paid staff. We are a volunteer. But yeah, he does all of the technology pieces of it. Occasionally we do outsource things as we have to do and We have to pay the Amazon web services for everything. So yeah, we have a lot of those kinds of costs.

So walk us through the process. If someone loses a pet, what are the immediate steps that they should take on pet fbi.org?

Yeah, so go to pet fbi.org and the first thing they're gonna wanna do is go to the button that says Create a report, and they're gonna enter their report in the system. It's a easy form, it'll walk them through. They'll need to create an account with us, and that's just so we can make sure they're a real person and we have a way to contact them and they'll upload a photo of their pet and submit the report. Once they submit the report they will get a confirmation with, from us, with some tips. That report is then emailed out. So let's say they entered a lost PET report, lost dog report in Columbus. They're gonna immediately get all the found dog reports in the Columbus area that match up with the date and location. So we'll first get those. Those matching potential match reports and their lost report is gonna be sent to all the found report people who are registered in our database. So that happens. The report is then in our database to be searched, and then it's also sent to our partner group immediately to be posted on their Facebook page. And for the most part, most of our partner groups, that report is auto posted on their Facebook page. So it's immediately showing up on social media.

So there's a feature where it'll automatically get uploaded to their pages, and so they don't have to go in and physically do that?

That's correct, yes. It does get automatically uploaded, however, because these are volunteers all of those are curated. So they're checking all of those posts just to make sure that they're correct that they uploaded properly. So somebody's looking at all of those reports, but they do get uploaded immediately.

You said that if somebody posts a lost pet, and then if somebody posts a found pet, then at that time the system will try to do the match itself. Can you explain that a little bit more?

Yeah, so the system will, at this point, it's just looking at species and location and date. So it's not gonna look at the photos right now, but if you have a found dog that's, you have a lost dog and there's a found dog posted within 25 miles and it matches the date criteria, you're gonna get that email alert. So a lot of them are not gonna be a match, but we, at this point, we feel like we'd rather send too many than miss something accidentally. What we found is that people who have found a pet, sometimes they misidentify the breed or the gender. So we don't wanna filter by those criteria when we're emailing out potential matches.

Do you have any plans in the future of possibly using AI technology to help more with matching the pets?

Yes, thanks for bringing that up because we are playing around with it. We do use some AI right now, so if you would go into our database and create a report and upload a photo, our system will automatically fill in the species. The breed and the color just by looking at the photo, which saves the person who's entering the report a little bit of time. And it's also really nice for somebody with a found pet who may not know what dog breed that is. So we do use AI in that way. But we're still playing around with it. We are looking at how we can maybe make the matching process a little better by using technology.

With the volunteers that you have that are contributing to reuniting pets, do they receive any kind of special alerts or anything that would help them?

Every time a report is posted in their area, let's say they're for lost dogs, Illinois. Anytime they get a dog report in Illinois, they automatically get an email alert. So they know that report has come in, so they can quickly go in, post it to Facebook, look at the report, and then they can reach out to the owner or finder at that time.

Now beyond the database, what other resources or advice does pet fbi.org offer to pet owners and finders? Do you have any kind of like flyers, templates action plans?

We do. So when they get their first confirmation email, they'll have links back to our database or back to our website linking them to the Lost Cat or the Lost Dog Action Plan, or the found pet action plan. We have lots of blog posts on our website with, tips and advice that they can scroll through. We also have a flyer template and so we encourage them to make their flyer immediately, which they can do right from their report. So as soon as the report is entered, they can go right in and make a flyer and it fills in all of the information. All they have to do is download it and print it and so it's ready to go. We really encourage flyers and signs. So we wanna tell people to get out there, pound the pavement and distribute those flyers when your pet is lost.

Okay, so you mentioned signs. So what kind of signs would you recommend?

So they can take the flyer from our site. The first signs we always recommend brightly colored. So getting brightly colored poster board, like neon colored poster board. Tape the flyer on it or just use a Sharpie. Tape the picture with some kind of waterproof packing tape. Use a big sharpie. Put the lost dog or lost cat and your phone number as big as possible. And then. Put those at, strategic places around in the area where the pet was lost, but brightly colored we think works best.

Yeah, so like a neon poster board, something like that?

Yes. Yeah. Neon poster. It doesn't have to be fancy neon poster board, a black Sharpie with your phone number and tape a picture of your pet on it. Yeah, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be super fancy.

Yeah, that's a great tip. What are some of the most common challenges or misconceptions people face when they're trying to find a lost pet or reunite A found pet?

I think that there are a couple things. So one of the things we see all the time and Jeanette probably talked about this as well, is people assuming that they're gonna be able to call their dog and their dog's gonna come right back to them. I think people are really surprised how quickly a pet can go into survival mode and they may not come running back. So there's a little bit of an education that we try to do. On how to treat that lost pet and what to expect. We also want to get people out and searching. We don't want them to. Enter a report in our database and then sit back and wait. It's really important to get the word out to post in multiple places and get out and search, especially if you have a lost cat. Searching is one of the best ways 'cause they could be trapped somewhere. So you wanna get out, search your yard, ask permission to search your neighbor's yard, search in garages and sheds. Just really pound the pavement again to try to find that pet. Also, it's really important that you have good contact information and people can get ahold of you quickly. So that's a little bit of a struggle for us and our volunteers, especially when we don't have great contact information or the owner or the finder is not answering their phone or answering their email. So we just want people to be aware that if you're, if you've found a pet or lost a pet, please check your email and your voicemail often.

I do see that a lot too. And I have a few lost pets groups that I admin, and that's one thing I see all the time. It's people will post their pets, but they never include any kind of contact information.

Yeah. And that's frustrating.

How crucial is micro chipping and what advice do you have for any pet owners regarding microchip registration and update?

Yeah, so I think microchipping is essential. Every pet should have a microchip. We need, you need to make sure that microchip information is updated, and we recommend that every year when you go to visit your vet, you have them scanned, make sure the microchip is still functioning and has it migrated, and that you also check your registration with the company that has the microchip registration to make sure it's up to date. People don't realize sometimes they change their cell phone number or they move or they change their email address and then that microchip, it doesn't do any good if it doesn't have good contact information attached to it. So we recommend at least once a year you check that.

So doing this, you certainly are knowledgeable about the behaviors of lost pets. Did you take any kind of classes or is this something that you learned as you went along the way?

It's something I've learned as I've gone along the way, but we are very fortunate in our organization that we have several volunteers who have a lot of experience working with lost pets and have taken classes and so I've been fortunate to absorb their knowledge.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. So now you did say that your partner organizations will post on social media. Do you see like local community groups also getting involved in, say, sharing your flyers and the posts from their pages or from your pages?

Yeah, and that is our goal, so that they share from our pages. And so we do, it just depends on the area and how active the community groups are. But yes, we do have a lot of Facebook groups and other groups just like city or town Facebook groups that will share the posts. And that's exactly what we want. We really wanna get the word out. We make it easy on the report to share to Nextdoor and we encourage everybody, if you've lost a pet, to share it to Nextdoor as well. There's an easy click to share to Nextdoor button on every report. And so that's a great way to get the word out to your neighbors.

Oh, that's good to know too. 'cause I didn't know there was an easy way to share things to Nextdoor, so I'll definitely share that information too in my social media groups.

Yeah. Nextdoor is great and those are your neighbors. Those are the people most likely to have seen your pet. So yeah, we always recommend that you share to Nextdoor.

Yeah. And you can always ask your neighbors too, to check their cameras. If you don't have cameras and they have cameras, they might be able to check 'em and help you out with that too.

Yes. The ring cameras are great. Yes, exactly.

What are some of the most important things pet owners can do before their pet goes missing to increase the chances of a successful reunion?

Yeah, I always have, we say have good id, so they should have a collar, a well-fitting collar and an ID tag with your phone number. That being microchipped, we know that pets a lot of times go missing without their collar, so your backup is your microchip that needs to be registered with your current information. Just be diligent. Make sure that your fences are in good repair, that you're being careful when you're opening and closing doors. We've had a lot of bad weather in my area. Not sure what it's doing in your area. But we've had a lot of high winds and so being very careful, make sure that a fence hasn't blown open, a gate isn't open. When you're walking your pets, when you're walking your dog on a leash, make sure that leash is fitting, that leash is tight, you have a secure harness or collar. Be aware, we are still hearing fireworks here too, so be aware that there are loud noises and be prepared to react to that as well. But the main thing is just having good identification.

Another thing too I would like to ask is how user friendly is pet fbi.org? Because I know there's a lot of older individuals that aren't too keen on using the internet, but they may have a pet go missing there. May might not be on social media, so is it something that would be easy for them to use? Is it easy to navigate?

Yeah, I think it's easy to navigate the form. The report form itself is just, it's just like you're filling out a form. You're just going from field to field and entering the required information. So not everybody feels comfortable with that, but as far as a form on a computer, I think it's pretty easy. And they submit it. The one thing we do encourage people to give a phone number, but we also understand. Especially maybe an older adult or somebody living alone may not want to publish their phone number. There is an option where they can enter the phone number, but keep it private. And we, that would be so the volunteers can contact them. So if they don't feel comfortable giving that information out, they can still enter it. That gives us a way to contact them if we need to, but it doesn't make it public.

And as far as the photos, do you just use one photo or can people upload multiple photos?

It's just one photo at this point. So yeah, we just recommend that you use a really good photo that shows any unusual markings that's clear that people would be able to identify your pet with.

Now, have you come across situations when a pet may be missing for a while and you might have a. Say a found report come in and people are reluctant to think it's their pet be just because of their pet being out for a while. They, of course, they might look different,

yeah, that has happened. And yeah, it is amazing. Even a pet that's only been missing for a few days can look very different. If they've run through the mud or whatever may have happened in that time. So we just encourage everybody, leave no stone unturned. If you think there's a slight possibility, it could be your pet. Check it out. Don't dismiss it, even if the pet's a long way away. Somebody could have picked him up and transported him. So yeah, we say check everything. You just never know.

Yeah, it's definitely good advice. I know that happened to me actually one time, and I actually remember the cat's name. His name was Meatball. And I saw I, I saw this cat posted. For some reason, I guess it was the name Meatball just stuck with me. But I saw about maybe three months later, somebody posted a cat that looked exactly like meatball, but it was like about 20 miles away and I'm like, I am pretty sure that is meatball. So I sent that to over to the owner and it ended up to beam his cat.

Oh wow.

Yeah. Oh, that's

fantastic. Yeah.

And don't know how it was an indoor cat. So best we can guess is that either somebody picked him up or he just crawled into somebody's truck and hitched a ride.

Yep. Yeah, we've seen that happen. The other thing we've seen happen is sometimes a finder will have the dog groomed and they'll look completely different. You just we had that happen once where they were all groomed and pretty and, nobody recognized him. So you just never know. And other thing, we've seen a lot of our volunteers talk about this as well, is sometimes when you take the picture you're getting a mirror image. So maybe they have a patch over one eye, but when you see the picture, it's on the other eye. So don't let that throw you off, because sometimes the picture can reverse the image. Yeah, that's true. So just because it's on the other side, don't discount it. It could still be the same pet.

Yeah. I never thought about that, but that's actually 100% true.

Yeah. Yeah. So we've seen that happen too. Keep that in mind. Somebody will dismiss it and say, no, the patch is over the wrong eye. And we're like, maybe not.

Ah, yeah, that's great advice right there. So do you have a favorite or particularly memorable happy tale story of a pet being reunited?

Oh gosh, there's so many. Yeah. We had one where the cat had got escaped in a hotel. And the people just kept coming back and putting up flyers and putting up flyers. And some guy had taken the cat home who had stayed at the hotel, found the cat, took the cat home with him. He was actually in another state. The owners kept coming back and putting up flyers. Finally, they got in touch with him and he drove the cat all the way back from another state. To bring the cat home meet up with the owners at the hotel, but he'd bought, he'd taken the cat home and bought it, toys and everything, and he brought all the cat and all his new accessories back home to the owner. Oh, wow. But the persistence of, I know. It was very sweet. The persistence of the owner though, just kept going back to the hotel, kept putting up flyers trying to get the word out, and eventually it worked.

Yeah, that's I see that a lot here actually. Where people will lose their pets in the hotels or they'll be driving through, they lose their pets and they'll stay around for a few days and, but they don't encourage the flyers, which I think is a big thing. I really think, like you said, they need to go put the flyers and put 'em all over that hotel. Or at least keep calling the hotel and saying, Hey, can you put your flyers back up? Or the businesses that are in the area too.

Yeah, exactly. Persistence pays off. It really does because like you've noticed, you've said, not everybody's on social media. Not everybody's looking at next door. Not everybody's gonna see a flyer, so you have to do all the things, you have to try to get the word out in every channel you possibly can in hopes that somebody will see it.

So how many pets approximately has pet fbi.org helped reunite over the years?

Oh gosh. I wish I had a really good answer for that because we've switched databases. I don't have a total number. We do manage about 90,000 reports a year. That includes some shelter intakes. We work with some shelters to help them with their intakes. I can tell you that. Around people. We rely on people updating their reports to know how many we've reunited. But we do reunite about 47% of lost dogs and probably about 34, 30 5% of lost cats are reunited. Again, we know those numbers are probably higher because not everybody updates their reports, but that's just going on. The reunited reports in our system.

Wow, that's quite a number. Then if you do that many a year.

Yeah, it keeps us pretty busy and like I said, we do work with some shelters. And so we do encourage shelters if they're interested to reach out to us and, we can pull their intakes from their shelter software into our system as well.

And is that something that's easy for them to do?

It depends. It the most of the work's on our end, but it depends on what shelter software they're using. Some of the shelter softwares are set up to integrate more easily, so it just depends on their shelter software.

So what kind of impact do you aim to have on the broader issue of lost and homeless pets?

So our vision for the world, if we were just, streaming is that every pet gets back home so that there's a way we know pets are always gonna get lost. We would love it if we could prevent that, but if we could make sure that every pet can find their way back home. So that is encouraging microchipping, making sure people understand and use ID tags, spaying and neutering pets. Those are the things that'll help prevent pets from going missing or getting back home. So that's our goal is to make sure those pets have a way to get home.

And do you have pets of your own?

I do right now, we have, we just started fostering a cat last month. It's already a foster fail, so

that's a good thing.

Yes, she's adorable. So yes, we've had cats and dogs over the years. Our oldest cat passed away last year at 19, and we took a little break but now we're. Now we're back in it with a new cat.

Congratulations on the foster fail. Thank you. For pet fbi.org, do you do only dogs and cats, or have you had any other species?

We do anything. We have birds and reptiles, turtles, we've had horses, pigs, goats. So yeah, anybody can enter a report for any species. The majority, probably 60% of our reports are dogs. Close to 40% are cats. And then there's 1% of other species, which are our birds and ferrets. Other things.

And so what is the most unusual type you've seen?

We had, we did have a tortoise, a large tortoise that actually made it probably a good two or three miles before its family found it. We had some goats not too long ago. And I think we had a peacock. Oh, okay. A while back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but we do get we do get birds. We probably after dogs and cats, probably birds are the most, so we do get birds that. Wander away. And we did just put a blog post up on our site about what to do if you lose a bird, because that's something that not everybody knows what to do. So we put some new information up about that.

Can you go over that?

Yeah. In fact. The blog post. So we actually, there is a group called 9 1 1 Parent Alert and we collaborated with 'em to use some of their information for this post because they do a lot. They have a lot of information on how to get your bird back, but basically you want to, it's a lot of the same things you do for any pet is conduct a physical search. 'Cause they're usually within a half a mile to two miles within the home. So you wanna, look up as opposed to maybe with a dog, you wanna be looking up in the trees and as you're looking for your bird and their advice is the best time to search is just before or after sunrise and later in the day around sunset, because that's when birds are most vocal. And again, you wanted to use signs and flyers to spread the word. And if you have, you can take your birds enclosure outside. So if you have a safe, secure place, you can put their food and water out in the enclosure and leave the door open. And so some of your, some birds may fly right back in their cage. If you have a recording of your bird's vocalizations you, they say to play that and that might attract them to come home. But other than that, it's the same process as for other pets, which is to get the word out, post a report post on next door, get flyers out to your friends and neighbors, mail carriers, UPS drivers, anybody who may be in and out of your neighborhood. I thought the cage thing was interesting, and also the sunrise, sunset, I think is a good advice for looking for a bird.

Yeah I didn't know that. I see quite a few lost birds. I've never heard anybody mention that tip, so that is a great tip.

Yeah. Yeah. So if you go to our website, it's one of the blog posts that's still on the front page. You can click on it.

What are your hopes or future plans for your organization? Are there any new initiatives or features in the works?

Yeah, we've been, testing some SMS messaging. We have some very large partner groups like Lost Dogs, Illinois, or Lost Dogs, Wisconsin. And they have big volunteer teams and so they message, they text every owner or finder. We have some states that have a smaller group and may not have the capacity to do that. So we've implemented, texting, automated texting. So once the report comes in, if we have their phone number, we will send them a series of text messages with advice, with a link to here's the link to make your flyer. Here are the first five things that you wanna do. So it's just a series of text messages to keep them engaged and encourage them what steps to take next to find their pet. So we started that a few months ago. It's been met with pretty good success. People seem to like it, so we're excited about that.

And for our listeners who want to help, how can they best support petffbi.org's mission

Tell your friends, promote it on social media. If you know somebody who's lost a pet, please encourage them to come to our website@petfpi.org and enter a report. They can go to our homepage and if they scroll down, there's a place where they can sign up for email alerts so anybody can sign up to get alerts of lost and found pets in their area, and they can help match. Lost and found pets themselves. So that's a great way to help. If they wanna get more involved, there's a volunteer application on our site if they'd like to be part of our team. And of course, we're also always needing donations and so they can go to our website and make a donation as well.

And before we end this call, what one piece of advice would you give to someone who has just lost their pet and feels completely hopeless?

Don't give up hope Don't panic. There are people who are able to help you get the word out. Stay calm. Most pets are reunited. It's just so overwhelming and terrifying when you lose your pet. But take the advice on our site. Take the advice of our volunteers, do the steps. There's a very good chance you'll find your pet.

And I think the stats that you gave us with the number of pets that you get in a year, the reports yearly that you get, and the number that's reunited, that kind of almost speaks for itself too. It definitely don't lose hope.

Absolutely. And don't give up. Most pets are found within the first few days, but it can go on for weeks, months, even years sometimes. So yeah, never give up. We see some miraculous reunions.

Thank you so much for joining me. I love your passion for lost Pets, and I'm glad we were able to have this conversation, and hopefully this'll help get more pets home.

Yes, I hope so. Thank you so much. It was wonderful to talk to you.

That's all the time that we have for today's episode. Thank you for listening and we hope you join us next week. If you know somebody that loves animals as much as I do, please send 'em our way. We would love to talk to 'em. If you are enjoying our show, please consider leaving us a donation. A hundred percent goes to our animals.

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