Lynn Miraglia, Brevard Lost Pets
May 29, 2013
“Daisy” is reunited on May 28 after missing since April 17th. Her story has a few lessons illustrated that I would like to share. The first lesson is “do not give up”.
About 3 weeks after Daisy went missing in Palm Bay, her owners gave up. (This is not uncommon so please do not judge.) In the Missing Animal Response training class that I took, I learned about this kind of response, and some of the reasons for it. For one thing, people often can't cope with the not knowing, and they need closure, sometimes any way they can get it.
Daisy's family felt that she was so skittish that she would never be caught, and that she had likely already starved. The lost report was to be closed, but Valerie Nichols read the story and offered her info to be the contact in the report in order to keep the report open on the website.
Around the same time that her family gave up, Daisy was found just a half a mile away by Amie and Courtney. Daisy was a mess, flea infested, had bites on her. She was vetted and as you can see from her photo, they took wonderful care of her! Courtney looked on the BrevardLostPets.com website but did not check as far back as April 17th, and so did not see Daisy’s report. Courtney religiously checked the website for new lost listings every few days.
The other day another female sheltie, by the name of Maggie, went missing in Palm Bay, and was reported on the BrevardLostPets.com website. Courtney saw the report, and called Maggie’s people. From speaking with them, she determined that the sheltie that she had found could not be Maggie.
Luckily, I was in touch with Maggie’s people (I am not in touch with everyone who lists a pet on the website). Allison mentioned to me that she got a call about a found sheltie but it was not a match. My ears perked up!
Skip to the end, Daisy is HOME.
Lessons: 1. Do not give up. If there were Daisy signs up, Daisy would have been home much sooner.
2. If you find a pet, especially one in rather poor shape, don’t assume s/he is abused, and please use the search function on the website to search for a particular city or gender or breed of lost pet. That function narrows the field of what you are looking for and goes back a year.
To share some of what Daisy’s family is now saying: “Thank you so much we're all crying tears of joy over here. And Daisy is happier than ever!” and “Daisy was so happy running around tail wagging. [...] I'm so thankful I listened to my friends advice to go to you.”
Let's hope Maggie, who is the catalyst to getting Daisy reunited, is home very, very soon.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=645818635432525&set=pb.345055015508890.-2207520000.1369869907.&type=3&theater
Blogger's Note: Lynn Miraglia runs Brevard Lost Pets, which is a missing pet posting website with a companion Facebook page covering Brevard County, Florida. Lynn has also been trained in Missing Animal Response by the Missing Pet Partnership.
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