Lost & Found Pets

Lost Pets

If you have lost your pet, it is important that you come to the shelter to see if it has been impounded. Due to the owner’s description not matching the officer’s description, staff will not provide this information over the telephone. Stray animals are held for 5 days, which must include one Saturday.

Found Pets

If you have found an animal with a city registration tag, you may contact the shelter and the owner’s name will be provided. You can take the pet to a veterinary clinic or the animal shelter to have it scanned for a microchip. Our community has an active lost and found pets Facebook page which has been successful in reuniting many pets with their owners. You can bring the found animal to the animal shelter during regular business hours or call the shelter to ask if an officer can pick him up for you. The shelter does not accept pets from outside the St. Joseph city limits.

Petco Love Lost

We're reaching out to our adopters, rescue partners, volunteers, foster families, supporters, and lost and found leaders in our community to talk about Petco Love Lost, formerly known as Finding Rover. This free, centralized lost and found tool is a single database which uses patented facial recognition technology to make finding lost pets quicker and easier. Having all lost and found pets posted in the same place means distressed pet owners no longer need to check dozens of different sources every day.

Animal shelters are on board, but we need your help to spread the word about this software so that any time a pet is lost or found, we all turn to Petco Love Lost.

Here’s what you need to know:

  • Petco Love Lost immediately pulls listings from shelter databases into a centralized place.
  • Lost and found pets are both posted on there. Uploaded photos of a missing dog or cat are immediately scanned to determine whether the lost pet is at a participating shelter or with a neighbor in the community.
  • Petco Love Lost is not just for shelters to use, but also for citizen-to-citizen matches.
  • Petco Love Lost has a smartphone app and their website is mobile-friendly, allowing pet owners and finders to quickly report lost and found pets, even on the go. There is no faster method to alert both the community and all surrounding shelters.
  • Petco Love Lost has award-winning pet facial recognition that makes matches, sending alerts of these matches to pet owners, finders and shelters.

Shelters, including BARCS, have helped test the facial recognition software, and we can tell you, it works!

You can register your pets in the database right now so if your pet ever goes missing, the software will automatically alert you of animals in shelters that look like your pet. Petco Love Lost is a FREE national database sponsored by Petco Love, formerly known as the Petco Foundation, so there is never any expense to pet owners, finders or shelters!

The St. Joseph Animal Shelter is a proud partner of Petco Love Lost, a free program of Petco Love. We have seen matches made both in our shelter and between community members. However, this program will only work to its full potential if our whole community is on board. Please help us spread the word about this lifesaving program so that we can reunite more animals with the families that love them.