My dog ran off — what to do in the first hour

First, three things not to do

1. Do not chase them. A dog you run after keeps running — play or fear, the result is the same. Stop, crouch down, speak calmly. If you can see them, turn around and walk away from them; many dogs will run after you.
2. Do not shout in anger. A dog who hears anger in your voice comes back reluctantly or not at all. Call them the way you call them for a treat.
3. Do not leave the spot straight away. For the first ten to fifteen minutes stay where you last saw them. A large share of dogs come back on their own after the first fright — to the place where they left you.

The first 15 minutes — on the spot

• Stop and listen. The tag jingling on the collar, barking, rustling in the bushes. Turn off your music, take your hood down.
• Call them calmly and wait. Not ten times in a row — call, wait half a minute, call again. If you have a whistle or a sound they are trained to, use that.
• Note the exact place and time. It will be the first question from everyone you call, and the point the search starts from.
• If you are walking with someone, split up: one stays on the spot, the other takes the most likely route — home, to the car, to the water, along the way you came.

Within the hour — widen the circle

Tell the people around you. Runners, cyclists, people with dogs, people in their gardens. Keep it short: breed or size, colour, name, your number. Ask them to message you even if they only saw the dog — a direction is as valuable as the dog.

Post in local groups. The group for your town or district, the “lost and found pets” group for your region, the group of dog walkers from your neighbourhood. One post with a photo, the place, the time and your number. Ask people to share it — a local group reaches further than your own profile.

Call the places where people take found dogs:

• the shelter or pound for your area — a found dog usually ends up there,
• the municipal police or the dog warden — catching stray animals is their job, and people report to them dogs they have only seen,
• vets nearby — whoever finds a dog usually takes them to the nearest vet to read the chip,
• the town hall — in smaller places it is the first to hear about a found dog.

On every call say the same thing: where, when, what the dog looks like, the chip number and your number. Ask them to write it down — the found dog may only arrive tomorrow.

Leave something on the spot that smells of home. Your hoodie, their blanket, a bowl of water. A dog who comes back at night to the place where they lost you has a reason to stay there and wait. If you can, return to that place regularly — morning, evening, at night when it is quiet.

The chip and the registry — what to check now, not later

Your dog has a chip under the skin. It helps — but only when someone reads it and when the registry has your current phone number.

• The chip transmits nothing. It is a passive tag with a fifteen-digit number, read by a scanner from a few centimetres away. A vet, a shelter or the police have a scanner — the person who meets your dog in the woods does not. So the chip only works once someone catches the dog and takes them somewhere.
• The number leads to a registry — and the registry is different in every country.
  • In some countries it is one state database, in others several private registries side by side. Find out which registry holds your dog's record before you need it — your vet knows where they entered it.
  • Europetnet (europetnet.org) searches the databases of 26 European countries by chip number and tells you which registry holds the record. Use it to check that the record exists — and then contact that registry, or your vet, to make sure the phone number in it is current.
• Check what the registry says. If you have changed your phone since the chipping, moved house or took the dog over from a breeder or a shelter, there is a fair chance the registry leads to someone else. Shelters report the same thing after every New Year's Eve: the dog has a chip, but the record leads nowhere. Call your vet — the chip number is in your dog's file, and they can tell you where and under whose name it is registered.
• Keep the chip number with you. In your phone, a photo of the pet passport. Every shelter will ask for it first.

Afternoon and evening — when they have not been found

• Print flyers. A photo across the whole page, one word “LOST”, the name, the place and time they went missing, your number. No long text — people read it from a car or a bike. Put them up at bus stops, shops, vets, on posts near the place they went missing.
• Walk the area slowly, on foot, with their favourite thing. A frightened dog will not answer — but they might move when they hear the familiar sound of a bowl or a toy.
• Check the places where a dog can hide: bushes, ditches, garages, spaces under sheds, building sites. A frightened dog looks for a quiet hole, not open ground.
• Call the shelters a second time. In the morning they wrote down your loss; by the evening they may have taken in a dog someone only noticed in the afternoon.

One thing that helps you calm down: the shelter does not give the dog away to anyone straight off. In most European countries a found dog has to be kept by the shelter for a legally set minimum period before it can be rehomed — from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, depending on the country. So there is time — but the count starts on day one. Call the shelter the same day and ask what the period is where you live.

The night

Most of the lost time does not happen in the first hour but in the first night. A few things that help:

• A quiet night is your ally. Without cars and people the dog hears further — and so do you. Go to the place where they went missing after dark and call them calmly.
• Light helps the dog find you, not the other way round. Torch pointed at the ground, not into the eyes.
• Leave the gate or the garage open if you live nearby. Dogs come home at night more often than you would expect.
• Fireworks and thunderstorms: if the dog ran off because of noise, they will run far and fast, and only hide once the noise stops. Search in the morning, not in the middle of the barrage — and search further than seems reasonable.

When they are found

• Do not scold them. Even if you have had the worst day of the year. The dog will remember that coming back to you means trouble — and next time they will come back later.
• Say thank you and call off the search. Post in the groups, call the shelter, take down the flyers. The people who helped deserve it — and you free up attention for the next person searching.
• Check the dog over. Paws, mouth, belly. If they drank from a puddle or ate something, watch them for a day or two.
• Fix the cause. The hole in the fence, the loose collar, the gate that does not shut properly. A dog who ran off once ran off because it was possible.

How it looks with Tifik

A GPS collar changes nothing of what is above — it only changes where you start. Instead of the place where you last saw the dog, you start where they are right now.

• You switch to live tracking and the location refreshes every few seconds. You are not guessing the direction — you follow the dot on the map.
• You light it up and ring it from your phone — even when the dog is at home or next to the house. A dog in the bushes at half past ten at night is found by light sooner than by eye.
• The safe zone lets you know when the dog leaves it. You hear about the escape before you notice the empty sofa.
• The QR code on the case is for the finder. They photograph it with their phone and a page opens with the dog's name and an “I found them” button — no chip scanner, no app. You get a message and you get in touch through us, without your number being made public.
• The collar does not replace the chip. The chip is permanent, cannot be taken off and in most countries is required by law. The collar answers the opposite question — not who this dog is, but where this dog is, and in exactly the hour this article is about.

It works everywhere with mobile coverage, trips around Europe included. And you can export the data about your dog at any time and send it to anyone you like.