Overcoming Pet Owner Apathy
Our greatest challenge in getting this book out there has been overcoming pet owner apathy. The fact is that every pet owner is at some level of risk. It has nothing to do with how responsible a pet owner you are. The woman that wrote the Foreword for our book, Nancy Peterson, Issues Specialist for Companion Animals and Coordinator for Pets for Life National Training Center for The Humane Society of the United States, is quite possibly the most responsible pet owner in the world, and even she lost a pet. Fortunately, her cat Obe was found right away. But it just goes to show you that anyone can lose a pet.
Just yesterday I ran into a guy who was out searching for his lost dog. Apparently this was becoming routine, he told me his dog escapes a couple of times a week. Having recovered his dog many times he was very confident that he’d find him again this time. Indeed he did find him. While I was standing there talking to him this very beautiful Australian Shepherd came slinking up from behind some hedges, head hung low; he knew he had been a bad boy. This is a very common attitude, "my dog has escaped a thousand times and I always find him", until the thousand and first time when he isn't found, as countless grief stricken pet owners can testify.
I told the gentleman that I just wrote a book on the subject of lost, missing, and stolen pets called The Complete Guide to Lost Pet Prevention & Recovery. I told him he had been very lucky so far, his dog had escaped several times and he always get him back, many, people I told him, are not so fortunate. I asked him if he’d ever considered what you would do if you didn’t find him right away? He didn’t have an answer. Don’t you think it would be better to address your dog’s escaping behavior rather than chasing him down a couple of times a week. I told him there were many simple things that he could do to prevent his dog from running off and that we have an entire section in the book on dealing effectively with escaping behavior. I told him “you know a lot of missing pets are lost and never found, many of them are taken in and kept by the people that find them”, especially purebred dogs. He said no one would keep his dog because he had a defect, an overbite, and proceeded to show me the dog’s disfigured jaw. I could hardly tell, and told him his dog was very handsome and that the possibility of someone finding and keeping him was very good. I said even if there was a slight possibility of your dog being taken, why take that chance, again no answer.
How do you overcome this level of apathy? If you can’t convince a guy that loses his dog twice a week that he needs a book like this, how do you convince relatively responsible pet owners that rarely, if ever, have their pet escape, that the potential for losing their pet is still very real? Indeed the responsible pet owner may be the most vulnerable off all simply because if it were to ever happen they are completely unprepared.
Our book is about prevention and preparedness. Part of any good prevention strategy is knowing exactly what to do to recover a lost pet, before that pet is ever lost. So the question I ask every pet owner, which is the question on the header of our web site www.lostpetfoundpet.com is If your pet were ever missing would you know what to do?
Andrew
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