PSA from your local Animal Control

PSA from your local Animal Control Office.

For FOUND animals.

1. Walk around your neighborhood asking your neighbors if anyone recognizes the animal. Especially for dogs, walk with the dog or have a picture ready

2. Post on LOST PAWS ESVA. Most animals are reunited quickly this way

3. Take the animal to a local veterinarian to scan for a chip

4. Call Animal Control to make a report

5. All found animals must be reported to animal control within 72 hours. You have no idea if someone is missing their animal. Do not make assumptions and keep the animal for months, microchip the animal to you, or attempt to rehome the animal without notifying Animal Control.

6. For Found dogs without identification they are on a legal hold for 8 days. With identification (collar, leash, microchip, spayed/neutered) they are on a legal hold for 11 days

For LOST animals

1. Post a detailed description and picture of when your animal went missing on LostPawsESVA

2. Talk to your neighbors and notify them of your missing animal

3. Call Animal Control to make a report. Be ready to give a detailed description of your pet, location, your information, and a picture

4. Post flyers at your local post office, veterinarians office, and your neighborhood

5. If your pet comes home notify Animal Control. Take your flyers down, and post on LostPawsESVA that the pet is reunited.

Following these steps ensures that you are doing everything possible to reunite the animal to the proper people or have your animal reunited. If you are willing to hold on to the animal during the legal hold if you have found a pet please keep in contact with animal control. Our shelter is small and we only have so many kennels. We rely on the community to follow the proper steps and to help reunite pets before they make it to the shelter.

If you need to surrender a pet to the shelter. Please give us a call first. We are limited on space. We are not a re-homing facility and try very hard to adopt our animals as quickly as we can. That being said the fate of most of your pets coming into our shelter is not always guaranteed. Please try to rehome your pet privately before you surrender to us.