ANIMAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE NETWORK FAQ
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If you have reason to believe that your pet, which was displaced during a disaster, was entered into AERN, then you should take the time to learn how AERN works. To search for your pet go to http://disaster.petfinder.com/emergency/ and click on the “Search reports of Found, Rescued and Sheltered pets” link. From here you can search on various criteria including the last known location of your pet, animal type, breed, gender, etc. When in doubt make the search as broad as possible to ensure that your pet will be included in the returned listings.
Some “found” pets enter the system with little more than a photo and an ID number. Others have full descriptions, identification numbers, good breed information, and a street address where the pet was rescued. Navigating public searches with such inconsistent data is one of AERN's largest challenges, since allowing people to limit their search to a particular breed only works if their pet's breed was entered into AERN. One of the most common questions AERN received during Katrina is “why can't I search by street?” The early answer was “because very few pets have a street in their data set and searching by street would likely cause you to miss finding your pet.”
When pet data first enters AERN after a disaster, some pieces of information may be deemed too inconsistent for us to feel comfortable allowing search results to hinge upon it. It would be misleading to allow someone to search on very detailed information when this would only lead to the false conclusion that their pet is not in the system. There are many different search options available. To be most effective, you will want to search multiple criteria in many different combinations. And always do as broad a search as possible. For example, you may classify your dog's breed as a collie, while someone who entered the pet may consider your dog to be a German shepherd. So if you find no collie like yours in AERN, re-do your search under the broadest possible criteria. This is the most effective way to locate your missing pet.
To view additional details about your pet, click on the “View Details” link or your pet's photo. If the person or organization caring for your pet has provided phone or email contact information it will be listed here. For assistance using the Animal Emergency Response Network please email pets@petfinder.com.
New pet records are entered every day following a disaster. Also, each day following a disaster, the pet data gets better and better. For instance, at first, rescuers may be working so hard to save pets, they don't track breed information. Later, when the pet is in a shelter or foster situation, details about the pet are added to the database. Therefore, it is important to come back frequently to find and/or identify your pet.
In large disasters, if multiple animal shelters and placement groups volunteer to be “receiving organizations”, groups that take in pets from the major temporary shelters, they will sign a memorandum of understanding with the temporary shelter which obligates them to hold the pet until a certain time has passed. For Katrina, the date was October 15. Until then, receiving shelters were to cooperate to reunite displaced pets with their families. After October 15 these organizations may choose to adopt the pets in their care to qualified new families. Some receiving shelters voluntarily extend the holding period for periods of up to six months. This is a controversial ethical dilemma that leaves many organizations feeling torn between what they feel is best for displaced owners, the pets, and the resource-stretched receiving shelter. Petfinder.com strongly encourages receiving shelters to grant owners a minimum of 30 days after displaced pets are posted on AERN with sufficient information as to make them recognizable before they place them up for adoption. Because pets being placed for adoption will likely be posted at http://www.petfinder.com, owners should also look for their pet in the adoption database there.
The AERN database currently has pets posted that are “location unknown” or still say that they are at Lamar Dixon, which isn't true. These pets are not necessarily lost. What we know for sure is that this particular record in AERN was never updated. In a perfect world, each pet that left the Lamar-Dixon temporary facility should have had an updated record stating the location of the receiving shelter with contact information so that owners could effectively reclaim their animals. In some cases, the chaos of disaster precluded this from happening. Some pets were sent in groups of 100 or more for safe harbor with limited tracking information, especially as Rita bore down on the region. Staff and volunteers at HSUS, Petfinder.com, the Petfinder.com Foundation, as well as hundreds of volunteers across the country, have been pouring over pet records to determine the location of these pets. As fostering organizations received these Lamar-Dixon animals, many posted the pets as new entries. This means that the original entry never got updated, but the actual pet does have an up-to-date posting on AERN. To help match these pets, we now have a “duplicate finder” that lists possible matching pets in the database on the pet description page of each animal. There are some pets that were never entered into the AERN database. Possible causes are that they weren't ever “found” or rescued by animal welfare rescuers or that they were removed from Lamar-Dixon without tracking their ID number. There are some pet entries in AERN that continue to frustrate us. Possible causes of these entries are:
We are all horrified that owners may not reunite with these pets easily or at all. However we ask everyone to keep in mind that these pets are almost certainly safe in the hands of caring shelter or rescue individuals or have been re-homed to qualified adopters. While this is little consolation to the owner, it is important to keep in mind that the pet rescuers, with very few exceptions, are heroic people who risked their lives for these anonymous pets and will continue to go to extreme measures to protect their safety.
In most disasters there are often two groups of rescuers. Ones that work inside the established system of emergency command (usually a public-private partnership involving local animal control like LA SPCA and HSUS, AHA, ASPCA, or UAN(EARS)) and those that work outside the system in an unsanctioned manner. The sanctioned groups are often faulted for not being efficient and not being proactive enough. The non-sanctioned groups are often faulted for putting the lives of rescuers at risk or making it difficult for the sanctioned groups to do their job. Both use trained and untrained volunteers. Sometimes there is crossover. An individual working with unsanctioned groups recognizes she can do more good working with incident command. Or an individual working with a sanctioned group gets frustrated by bureaucracy and strikes out on her own (sometimes risking arrest). Both groups are comprised of well-intentioned individuals. AERN is not a political entity and is therefore a tool that both groups use. This neutrality is important to capture the best information on all the pets being rescued.
As long as all the organizations rescuing pets post their information in AERN, the owner should contact the pet's current caretaker the same as if the pet was located at any foster home or facility. In this case, the caretaker of the displaced pet is more likely to be an individual foster home rather than a traditional shelter. “Rouge” groups are no less committed to animal care than are sanctioned groups. The difference is a matter of process and procedure, not kindness.
There is certain information that is not available to the general public (phone numbers, home addresses, etc.) to protect the privacy of the people affected by the disaster. This information is available to the organizations (and their authorized users) helping to reunite pets with their families. They will be given out on an individual basis to help facilitate a match. It is important to make contact with authorized personnel to get additional information.
The Animal Emergency Response Network is the most comprehensive database of its kind. The database is the largest with data coming from the widest variety of sources and generally includes the data found on other, smaller sites. AERN staff and volunteers also spend countless hours cleaning and organizing data, as necessary, and working to find matches. By functioning as a single clearinghouse for information it is the place you will be most likely to find your pet. Thousands of Petfinder.com member shelters, dozens of AERN collaborators, and Petfinder's millions of visitors insure that displaced pets on AERN get the attention they deserve.
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