Pet Detective: I Find Missing Dogs
Any domestic dogno matter how trained and faithful she may be, especially in a big and nervous city. The search for a missing dog is a time consuming and difficult task that is almost impossible to do alone and which requires preparation and coordinated work. This is exactly what DogPower volunteer movement, launched late last year by producer Eugenia Molodtsova, took up. We talked with her about what the search for fugitives is and what it is worth remembering so that in principle you don’t have to look for your beloved pet.
Dmitry Kurkin
My first dog
I worked as an executive producer in the production of TV shows, movies, VR. Now I’m working for the third year in the KinoPoisk editorial office as a producer of the video department: we make movies about cinema, interviews and podcasts.
My parents were not dog lovers, but my grandmother had a dog. I remember proudly stomping with the dog around the yard, as if it were my ward, in the few weeks when my grandmother came to visit. However, in order to start my dog, I had to grow up, move out from my parents, live in another country, come back and have my first pet already here. Now there are two of them - they are brother and sister from the same litter, both mongrels, whom I took away with a difference of one and a half years from the Kozhukhovsky orphanage.
Dogpower
The DogPower movement began with ad builder and propalasobaka.press. On the website you can find instructions on what to do in order not to lose the dog, and what happens when the dog is already gone. The main thing - you can fill out the form, answering questions and following the prompts to create a bright, understandable ad, not forgetting to mention the breed or size of the animal. Because people under stress are completely lost and forget to indicate the second phone number or important sign.
Although the search for a person and a dog is very different, the main points - for example, the presence of a coordinator - are identical with Lisa Alert. The search for pets in Moscow is usually done either independently or with the help of local district chats in some messenger. Therefore, the system was invented and changed already in the process.
Dogs are and after a couple of months, but, of course, the easiest way to find in the first hours after the loss. Every day the chances are reduced. And it’s not only that a dog without a person in a city is most often doomed to death (cars, cold, doghunters), it’s also that it can go in any direction, so in a week the search radius will reach ten twenty kilometers away.
Fenya, Madonna and Nut
How it works: we get a request for mail, in the general chat we write that we are looking for a coordinator. If it is located, we join in the work. All the affairs of the volunteers are coordinated, and the announcement of the search and the link to the chat we post publicly in our groups.
There are several main areas: field work (especially if they have just lost) and online work. Online is the placement of information in social networks, profile groups on lost dogs, areas and breeds, monitoring of these groups and the hashtag in instagram # found a dog. "In the field" they are looking for the animal itself, putting up announcements, interviewing janitors, guards, those who are often on the street, just passersby. Further, depending on the complexity, we begin either to view the cameras in the pavilion DIT at VDNH (In October 2016, the Department of Information Technologies opened a public access point to the city's video surveillance system at the Exhibition of Economic Achievements, which allows viewing archived recordings from cameras. -PRome. Ed.), or we catch a dog with a catcher (professional animal rescuers working for a fee, as well as employees of the municipal service for the regulation of the number of homeless dogs and cats. - Note ed.), if it does not go into the hands of stress. For example, this often happens with shelter dogs who were lost during the adaptation period in a new house.
Most of all I remember three searches - Feney, Madonna and Nuts. They searched for Fenya for about a week in the area of the Nagornaya metro station, and found her on Kutuzovskaya thanks to a photo posted by a girl on the VKontakte network - with a note that a new dog had been nailed in the yard. So the coordinator was able to bring the dog home. Then we understood: just one photo can help to finish the search, so you should always keep track of social networks, but you never know where it can come up - by hashtag, in the district group or simply by searching for VKontakte.
Madonna is a sheltered and very intimidated dog who is terribly afraid of people. She escaped due to a human error while walking near Kuskovo Park and was carried off with a leash and collar in an unknown direction. We searched for it for five days, went out in the frosty mornings to the park, pasted ads, climbed the whole territory and stuck it with leaflets, it seems, every tree. Five days later, a man called who saw a similar dog near the park. Twenty minutes later we were there, interviewing the janitors and finally meeting her in the middle of the courtyard. The dog noticed us about fifteen to twenty meters and rushed in the opposite direction at a breakneck pace. In general, after half an hour, having lost her twice and avoiding all the courtyards, the two of us caught the Madonna. And they made conclusions: you need not to stop running training, and luck is also a great success of the search operation. In our case, the leash, which wrapped around the paw, and the fence, through which the fat butt of Madonna simply did not crawl through, helped us give us an extra five seconds to catch up with.
The third search is Gadget, we are looking for her from the New Year holidays, she ran away in the same park Kuskovo, frightened by the New Year's salutes. Looking for so far. The perfect is not clear, we will find it or not. Several dogs with whom she was confused, have already returned home: we either wrote about them ourselves, or found announcements about their disappearance after the fact. Strikingly the other - the persistence of the hostess. She does as much as many people do not seem to do for another person. So faith in people is not lost. Everyone can lose a dog - it may be a coincidence, it may be a mistake, but it is still no reason to condemn the other. You never know how much effort he will put in to correct what happened, and how much he will amaze you.
Problems
It takes a lot of time explaining why we do things this way and not otherwise. For example, we do not post posts about searching for animals, for which we do not undertake. I made this decision before launching the project and am still confident in it. Groups with ads on the Internet a lot, big and effective. Volunteers come to us who are ready to help here and now, so we post posts with an active hashtag and a link to the chat. If we turn into a bulletin board, the effectiveness of posts will fall, they simply will not show social network algorithms due to low coverage. Therefore, we write about specific dogs, for whose fate is experiencing several thousand people.
Plus, we tried once to look in the Moscow region, emotionally succumbed, although, of course, it was immediately clear that we would not pull. And so it happened: some dogs were found, but some were not. As a result, the focus remains on Moscow, in the field of volunteers we do not have.
There are not many homeless animals, there are still catches and shelters in the city, but the shelters themselves are overcrowded. The worst thing is that people still believe that sterilization is bad, that "a dog must experience the joy of motherhood / fatherhood." So in the fall in the area remains a bunch of puppies, fed up by city dogs at the cottages. These puppies do not survive the winter, they throw someone at their own sites, throw someone at gas stations, leave someone in the forest. It took me a long time not to take each such case to heart and not to try to save everyone.
Prevention and search methods
First of all, you should put a pet with your phone on a separate shoe and never take it off. My dogs are in the "adresniki" all the time, I take them off every few months for half an hour while washing, then immediately put them back on. There are a lot of cases when the dog escaped through the open door while the person was taking out the garbage, so it’s better not to risk and protect yourself in such a simple and inexpensive way. Write two phone numbers - yours and one of your loved ones - hang the token on a separate string, so that if the animal is twisted out of its collar, the address bar will remain on it.
With a dog it is worth going to classes from a puppy age. Firstly, it will help raise a confident city companion dog, which is not ashamed to go to the cafe and ride the tram. Secondly, it will ensure her safety, and this is the direct responsibility of the owner of the animal. The classes themselves are in many respects useful not only for the dog, but also for the owner, who is accustomed to humanize the pet or not read the signals that it sends. So, most people, if the dog starts to run away from them, run after it, which is absolutely impossible: the dog will either decide what you are playing, or will take it as a threat and continue to move away. You can call such a dog, showing the direction of movement, where you call it, that is, moving away from it, crouching, crouching and slightly turning away. In general, there is nothing more useful than to take courses and understand who you still live with. And they will be with you at times more pleasant, and you - with them.
It is best to walk on a leash, releasing the dog on a dog platform or in a fenced summer cottage. I understand that it sounds utopian for many owners, but this is the easiest way to not lose a pet. If you still walk without a leash, then make an exception in December and January: salutes do not spare anyone, even the most courageous guys, who "have never run away for so many years."
If the dog is lost, first of all it is necessary to search around the place of loss, to call friends, relatives, communicate with dog owners who are walking and can notice your fugitive. In parallel, you need to write a post in social networks, do not forget to specify a phone number (preferably two, yours and your friend) and ask to spread information. On the Internet, such messages are quickly picked up by caring people and posted in specialized and regional groups. It would be good to ask someone who cannot help on the spot, monitor social networks, make reposts and write to communities. You can also send a friend to print ads, while you peep with a familiar toy and call the dog by name. It is also necessary to leave someone at the entrance, where the dog may return if he disappeared in a place known to him. Be sure to inspect the hatches, basements, holes. After two or three hours, it is worth expanding the search zone to the whole area and the adjacent territory.
It is necessary to be afraid of swindlers. Your number can call and say that they have found your pet. Ask to send a photo if a person refuses, says to transfer money first or come somewhere, you can safely assume that this is a fraud. Punching a number is also possible, but it does not always help. Most often, the dogs for which the reward is promised are returned by people who refuse it, because they understand how stressful it is for the owner. They are just happy to be part of a well-finished story.
PHOTO:Instagram / natashapolyakova
