New lost pet alert system

 What a great idea for finding missing pets

I know what it's like to have a lost pet - that frantic feeling.

Apso- My little blind rescue dog

My last little rescue dog was older, pretty blind and almost deaf. He got out when a worker doing remodeling left the door ajar. 

There were hours of talking to neighbors, putting out flyers and ads in the paper, 

Luckily, he was picked up by a kind older man and they tracked me down by the information on his collar.

In today's computer age - this is such a great idea - I hope other cities will follow this great example.


 

If your pet gets lost, Jersey City’s Animal Control Division says it can help you retrieve it, and quickly, with the newly rolled out “Fido/Feline Alert” system, which relies on other Jersey City pet owners to help find missing pets. 

When an owner loses a pet and provides the information or flier to Animal Control, it sends out an email blast to thousands of licensed dog owners who have signed up for electronic, rather than paper, communications from the agency. It also sends the information out to a handful of email lists, like the Jersey City dog and cat owners’ lists, as well as other key contacts like neighborhood associations and local animal hospitals. 

So far, Animal Control says it has been able to track down three pets — two dogs and a cat — using this crowdsourcing method since it began in May.

“Anyone who alerts us about a lost, stolen or missing pet can provide us with a flyer and we will email blast this out citywide,” says Harry Melendez, Director of Health and Human Services, Animal Control’s parent agency. “Our database presently has 3,100 active email addresses of our licensed dog owners as well as neighborhood associations and city agencies.” (The combined number of email addresses currently tops 5,000, according to Melendez.)

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