National Conversation on Lost and Found Pet Registers:

Solutions?

How can we collectively move forward? Some ideas...

The current situation is a bit like trying to find an item you're after in a village with a hundred different shops, some way out on the outskirts, some so well hidden down back lanes that you may miss them altogether.

1. One type of solution: a portal for lost and found registers. (This is Cat Chat's approach.) This is like having a map showing you the location of every shop in the village and providing a magic shortcut to each shop to eliminate travelling time. As long as the map is complete and up to date, this is very useful – but you still have to search every shop, and some of them are far easier to search than others. (Contact us for our views of the major online lost and found registers.)

2. A second type of solution: a network. (This is the Lost and Found Animal Network's approach.) For this to work, all registers need to be online and to adopt a sensible standardised proforma for registering lost or found pets. But at present very few animal rescue organisations have linked with them.

3. A third type of solution: one really good searchable, secure and successful online national lost and found register which everyone who lost or found a pet knew about, ideally contactable by telephone for those of us who are not connected to the net – a giant supermarket of a shop.

   STOP PRESS: March 2008

   One of the best online registers, the National Missing Pet Register, has, at RSPCA Oxfordshire's instigation, devised a free facility for organisations (branches of the RSPCA and Cats Protection, vets, animal rescue centres, etc.) to create an account with them.

   This means that details, including pictures, of any animal reported as lost or found to such an organisation can go online, where it is visible to every other such organisation and to members of the public. Because it is mediated via the organisation, it is totally secure.

   RSPCA Oxfordshire has created such an account and is now trying to liaise with all the vets, Cats Protection branches and animal rescue centres in Oxfordshire to persuade them to do likewise. If they succeed, Oxfordshire at least would have a publicly accessible county-wide lost and found register.

   Will other branches of the RSPCA do the same now?

Which of these approaches can be made to work?

Are there others?

Please contact us with your thoughts, or join in the conversation online by registering with lostandfoundconversation.