Pet Scams

"Truck Driver Scam"

We hear reports of this every week.  A person will call and say they have found your pet in another state.  They will tell you they are a truck driver, and would be glad to bring it home for you, but you will need to pay their expenses (gas, or lodging or whatever they may think of).  We have heard of everything from $50.00 to $1000.00.

You, glad to hear your pet is OK, will gladly agree.

In reality, they are just down the street.

How to combat this:

• Ask for a phone number you can all them right back at to be sure they are really out of state.
• Consider having them bring the pet to a Vet for boarding, and picking it up yourself.  In the rare case that this is real, offer to mail them a reward for their trouble.

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New Internet Trend

The latest pet trend on the Internet is lost and stolen pet posting services.  There are some serious flaws with these services that any pet owner should take seriously.

Although several organizations in Tulsa are heavily involved with one of the most common problems in pet ownership, the loss of your pet, we do not host a Lost Pet Board here at our web site.  The reasons for this are simple, but often overlooked.

Problems with Internet Lost Pet Boards and Services

1)  Only a percentage of the population have access to the internet, and few of the persons using the internet would think to look online to find their lost pet, or report theirs lost.  This particularly ignores the older population.
2)  The cost of advertising a lost pet board to educate the public (that did have access to the internet) would be astronomical.  Currently, none of the Lost Pet Boards have major marketing campaigns. 
3) There are so many boards now, that it would take hours to look through them all, in addition, not all search engines list all, or even most of the boards, so even finding them is a problem.
4)  Posting on a lost pet board gives the finder, or the person that lost their pet, a false sense of achievement.  It makes them feel they have done something to help the pet, when in reality, the chance of a lost pet and its owner finding each other on a pet board is very slim.

Even humane societies that list lost pets on the internet have reported problems.  With some societies only able to keep pets for three, or five days, the lag time to collect the data and post it on the internet can be critical.  

Humane societies that are often understaffed and overworked, have to balance the benefits and the negatives.  Currently, pet owners can call or visit the Tulsa City Animal Shelter or the Tulsa SPCA Shelter to look for their lost pets.  Posting on the internet does not provide any benefit over these time proven methods, but does allow for errors and time constraints and takes valuable time away from staff members. 

Sometimes doing something just because we can is not always good.  Internet Lost Pet Posting boards are a good example of this.

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