I think a lot of you guys probably have a plan if your dog went missing while on vacation, but with this being summer and I since I know there are a lot of new dog owners on YT I wanted to share a sort of crazy lost dog story that happened in my family a few years ago.
My sister took a cruise with her family and left Lucy her yorkie with my parents. Lucy is very familiar with my parents and their home and has stayed with them often. A gate was not closed properly and she got out. She had her tags and a microchip but all the info was for my sisters home phone and address. My parents live about 40 miles from her and while they had a key to her home they did not know her voice mail pass word or how to use it, plus they were not sure of how to get a hold of her on the ship and "they did not want to ruin her vacation, because after all what could she do long distance". This was on Long Island and I live in MI, so my parents did not think I could help and did not tell me for over 3 days. They are in their 80's and are not up on computers and caller ID and stuff like that. By the time I found out, they had put up some signs, were driving around, and had a friend of my sister's go to her house but she did not know how to access their voice mail. By the time I found out I was livid that this was going on and the dog was still missing and no one told me. I tried in vain to explain caller ID to them, which if you knew my parents was impossible for them to comprehend, I also tried to talk them into inlisting some kids in their neighborhood to go door to door because I was starting to think whoever may have found Lucy wanted to keep her. I was just making plans to travel to NY because I could not live with myself if I did not help, but finally the people that found Lucy got in touch with my parents. Hard to believe but they did not see or think to check the signs on the street posts or walk around asking people if they knew this dog. A neighbor of their's that knew they had found Lucky finally saw one of the signs and told them about it. When they delivered the dog to my parents it was clear that they and their young son liked Lucy and were prepared to keep her if no one came forward soon. Getting Lucy back could have only taken a few hours instead of 4 days if a plan had been in place.
So after that lesson, I make sure that whenever I leave Lola with someone I do have a plan, one of the things I do is have a tag made with the name and number of the person watching her, you can do this at many places for about $5.00 I also make sure I have given the person lots of contact info for me and that they know that no matter what I should be called, ruining my vacation pales compared to loosing Lola. My parents bless their hearts did not want to ruin my sister's vacation, but she could have accessed her voice mail either by computer or by phone and solved the mystery of who had Lucy. Since she was on a cruise and had nothing going on at home, or so she thought, she did not bother to check her Voice Mail or in with my parents (again to me this is a no no). After my sister got home I asked her to check the caller ID and sure enough there were several phone calls from a 516 area code the area code my parents lived in, but since they did not understand caller ID they never checked or could seem to understand how they might be able to figure out if someone was calling about Lucy so they would not try.
I know in part this was due to my parents age, so try not to leave your dog with an elderly person if possible, and if you do make sure they fully understand how to work things we take for granted. Since there was no plan, my parents spent 4 days in living hell worried about Lucy while she was being pampered up the street about 7 houses a way, luckily Lucy is a healthy dog with not many issues and does not need meds. I still shake my head that this happened to our family, especially since between my sister, my parents and myself we have raised and owned 9 dogs, you think we would have known better
So moral of the story, have a what if plan when leaving your dog in the care of anyone.