Founded in 2012, Austin Lost and Found Pets is now the primary resource for reuniting lost and found pets with their families in Austin and the surrounding areas. We work day and night assisting members of the community who have lost or found pets to successfully get them home to safety. Although we started out as a Facebook group, we have grown into so much more over the years.
In addition to guiding members through all of the steps necessary to locate a pet or its family, which often results in almost instant resolutions, we also provide services through the AL&FP Street Team.
Losing a pet can be an incredibly frightening, lonely, anxiety-filled experience – and it can be practically impossible to do it all by yourself. But, thanks to AL&FP Street Team, you don’t have to do it all alone anymore.
Our street team goes out to physically search for missing pets – so if you’re out of town, at work or trying to cover a large area alone, if you ask us for help, we will be out there with you, helping you cover far more area than you ever could by yourself or with just a few friends or family members assisting in your search.
In addition to physically searching for your pet, our street team creates flyers and signs, hands them out and puts them up in the area where your pet was lost, then takes them down once the missing animal has been found.
If a member spots a loose dog, an injured cat or a feral cat with kittens, our street team will go out to try to catch them safely and efficiently, often arriving and rescuing the animal(s) before Animal Control can arrive, which sometimes can take as many as three days. We have experienced trappers on our team, as well as humane traps, to aid in capturing even the most elusive cats and dogs.
If you have found a pet, but can’t make it to a vet clinic to get it scanned for a microchip, we can come to you. If the microchip isn’t registered, we have found that we can track down the owner, even when vet clinics and shelters can’t.
When a deceased animal is spotted, we try our best to get a team member there to scan for a microchip and take the pet to the Austin Animal Center for storage before Austin Resource Recovery arrives and takes the animal to the dump without scanning it, so that the family has closure and an opportunity to properly grieve.
At the beginning of this year, Austin Animal Center asked to partner with us and requested that we become a nonprofit. We acted immediately, and filed for 501(c)3 status the next week, however becoming a nonprofit isn’t free – it actually takes A LOT of money. We took out a loan to satisfy their request, but we have to pay that back – and we still owe thousands of dollars.
We’re very excited about the opportunity ahead of us to grow and expand our services. But first, we need staff and an office to keep our organization running smoothly, as well as funds for supplies such as a color copier, microchip scanners, crates, humane traps, dog/cat/bird food and money for properly vetting the animals we find.
We’re officially launching our foster program soon, and plan to open a Found Animal Shelter in the future in order to give found animals more time to be reunited with their families and to keep found pets out of the city shelter so that the wait for owner surrenders will no longer be two to three weeks at Austin Animal Center, as is currently the case.
We are pleased and proud to have kept literally thousands of animals out of the shelter over the past four years and to have reunited countless families in our community, and we look forward to being able to save far more pets and mend even more broken hearts than ever before.
Please make a tax deductible donation today. Your continued support and your incredibly valuable participation in our growing organization is so appreciated by the animals – and their people – in our wonderful community.
Austin Lost and Found Pets is so grateful for each and every one of you. ♡
