“Why am I here? Where is my family? Nothing smells like what I know. This bed is nice, bit not mine. This tennis ball doesn’t smell like me. These new people seem fun and nice, and  I have enjoyed hanging out with them. But I  want to go home. Where is my family?”

Here at Missouri Lost & Found Paws, we are committed to helping lost and found animals find their families. We are saddened when we see finder’s rehoming found pets with minimal effort to locate the owner.

Not all of us are abandoned.
Not all of us are abused.
Not all of us are neglected.
Many of us are lost,
And we need YOUR help to get home.

We hope that if you are a pet owner, you can close your eyes for a moment and imagine your beloved pet becoming lost. And a day later, someone finds your pet only to assume it has no owner, and rehomes it.

Imagine the loss and concern you would feel, not knowing your pet’s whereabouts. Not knowing what harm might come their way, by nature or by the hand of a cruel human being, it leads to feeling so very helpless.

Each pet deserves a chance to find its owner. It is not ethical to presume that the pet is abandoned and needs a home.

We at Missouri Lost & Found Paws do our best to educate both owners or lost pets and those we call finder’s, i.e. individuals who have found a wandering pet. It takes effort to get these fur babies home. It takes patience. It takes understanding and being empathetic. It takes understanding that there are many steps to perform to get the word out about lost pets. Not everyone uses social media. Not everyone uses nextdoor.com. Hanging signs remains the number one activity which helps lost and found pets return home. It also takes leaving assumptions and presumptions outside. These lead to unnecessary conclusions.

Our advice remains that if you find a pet and you cannot put forth the effort to find the owner, then take the pet to the closest shelter. The pet is simply not yours to re-home. Period.

It is not up to us as individuals to make that decision on our own with no effort to find an owner.

We owe these fur babies every opportunity to find their home. They deserve the chance to be back amongst their familiar scents.

Please. Help us get them home.