You Found a Pet After a Disaster: What You Are Required to Do, and What Nobody Can Answer Nationally

Call the animal control or animal services agency that covers the address where you found the animal, today, and tell them what you have, where you found it and how to reach you. No national law tells a finder what to do, states disagree about it, and nobody can say nationally how long before a found animal is legally yours. Have the animal scanned for a microchip, keep it away from your own pets, and if it bit or scratched you, wash the wound immediately and thoroughly and contact a health-care provider today.

Almost every page on this site about lost pets is written to the person searching. This one is written to you, the person holding the animal. If it is your animal that is missing, the post-disaster lost pet workflow is the page written for you.

This page is a process and sourcing guide. It is not legal advice and it is not veterinary or medical advice. Your state and local law settle the legal questions, and a clinician settles the medical ones. Where an official instruction differs from anything here, it wins.

The First Ten Minutes

Nothing on the legal side of this page changes if you get bitten in the first minute, so the sequence starts here. Humane World for Animals publishes approach guidance for a member of the public, and it is blunt about the risk: if you get close enough to capture the animal, you stand a good chance of being scratched or bitten. A strange, frightened and possibly sick or injured animal can behave unpredictably, and even opening your car door can make it bolt, possibly onto the highway. Its advice on the decision you are allowed to make: “If the animal looks or acts threatening, or if you feel uneasy about the situation, stay in your car.”

Three more instructions from the same page:

• Do not create a second emergency. Look in the mirror before braking, signal, pull completely off the road, turn off the ignition, set the parking brake and put on the hazard lights.
• Approach so the animal can see you, and bring a bribe. Speak calmly and stay visible. Humane World suggests “strong-smelling food such as canned tuna or dried liver.”
• If you cannot safely restrain the animal, call rather than chase. Humane World says to call the local animal control agency, or the police in rural areas, whether or not the animal is injured or wearing a tag, to leave a phone number with the dispatcher, and to report the location precisely with road names, mile markers or landmarks.

One point is this site’s own reasoning, not published guidance: position yourself between the animal and open ground, not between the animal and the road, because a spooked animal can bolt onto the highway and you want its escape route running away from traffic.

If the animal is a cat wedged under something, see getting a hiding or frightened cat into a carrier. If you can see it but cannot get near, the feeding station and trail camera method is the patient version.

Humane World also says to make sure you can keep your resident animals separate before bringing a found animal home, because it could be sick, fearful or aggressive with other animals. After a flood or fire that matters more: the animal has been standing in whatever the water or ash left behind. Set up a spare bathroom or a crated corner before it comes through the door. If you decide to wash it, read washing floodwater off a dog or decontaminating a cat after ash or floodwater first. A frightened animal you have known for an hour is the worst candidate for an improvised bath.

If the Animal Bites or Scratches You

A bite changes both what you should do for yourself and what may happen to the animal, and a finder who reads only the paperwork sections will get both wrong.

The national document here is the Compendium of Animal Rabies Prevention and Control, 2016, from the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians (NASPHV) and endorsed by the AVMA, the American Public Health Association, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and the National Animal Care and Control Association. It appeared in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Volume 248, Number 5, March 1, 2016, pages 505 to 517, and states that it has not undergone peer review. As of August 13, 2026, NASPHV’s compendia page still listed the 2016 edition as the current Compendium and said it was being revised, so check that page for a newer edition. Read everything from it with its own limit in mind, from page 505: “These recommendations do not supersede state and local laws or requirements.”

What to do for yourself

Wash the wound immediately and thoroughly, and contact a health-care provider today. Report the exposure to your local health department, and tell them the animal may be someone’s lost pet.

The source for that is the Compendium. Page 506 of the Compendium says questions about possible exposures should “be directed promptly to state or local public health authorities.” It says human rabies can be prevented by avoiding exposure to rabid animals or by prompt postexposure treatment, and that an exposure assessment, including discussion between medical providers and public health officials, should come before any postexposure treatment starts. So this page will not tell you whether you need anything. That is a conversation between your clinician and public health.

The Compendium’s only wound-washing instruction sits on page 512, in its wildlife section: a person exposed by a wild mammal should immediately wash the wound thoroughly and report to a health-care provider, who consults public health authorities on whether treatment is needed. A stray dog or cat is not a wild mammal. The Compendium sets no lower standard for a domestic-animal exposure, so this page reads that instruction as the floor: wash thoroughly and contact a health-care provider today whichever animal bit you. That reading is this site’s own reasoning, not a published protocol. If a clinician tells you otherwise, the clinician wins.

What it says about the animal

Two adjacent sections are easy to weld together, and welding them is the worst error available. Part I.B.5 covers an animal that was exposed to a rabid animal. Part I.B.6 covers an animal that bit a person. This section is about the second only.

For a healthy dog, cat or ferret that exposes a person, the Compendium recommends confinement and daily observation for 10 days from the time of exposure, regardless of the animal’s rabies vaccination status. It does not recommend vaccinating the animal during the observation period, to avoid confusing rabies signs with rare vaccine reactions. Any illness in the animal should be reported immediately to the local health department. The recommendation names no place for the confinement.

Then comes the sentence written for the animal you may be holding. Any stray or unwanted dog, cat or ferret that exposes a person “may be euthanized immediately, and the head or entire brain (including brainstem) should be submitted for testing”.

That deserves to be stated plainly, and five things belong beside it:

• It is a recommendation addressed to public health and animal control authorities, not a rule that fires automatically.
• It is scoped to a stray or unwanted animal, and an animal you can connect to an owner is neither.
• The document itself says it does not supersede state and local law, so your state or local health officer decides.
• The animal’s status can change: if a scan finds a chip or a tag shows a phone number, the animal is no longer unidentified.
• Part I.B.8 tells a disaster response to provide facilities to confine and observe animals involved in exposures, so observation is a route your health officer can take with an unidentified animal too.

For species other than dogs, cats and ferrets, the Compendium gives no observation period at all. Management depends on the species, the circumstances, local rabies epidemiology and the animal’s history and health, and the shedding period is undetermined for most species. If you were bitten by a found rabbit, bird, reptile or rodent, call the health department.

Do not keep quiet about a bite to protect the animal. NASAAEP’s 2023 best practices give the professionals running the shelter you are walking into the same instruction to observe all local bite reporting and quarantine requirements. A bite that surfaces later, from a household member or a clinic, surfaces without any of the context you could have given.

What the Law Generally Looks Like

The sources that treat a finder’s duties as a body of law, with cases and statutes attached, come from Michigan State University College of Law’s Animal Legal & Historical Center. Christopher A. Berry’s Overview of Law in Lost Pet Disputes (2010) frames the whole subject: the law arbitrates finder-owner disputes, and the outcome depends on the state, the parties and the facts of the case. Every confident national rule you read about found pets is arguing with that.

You are probably a bailee

Berry’s Detailed Discussion of Legal Rights and Duties in Lost Pet Disputes (2010) says that when a person finds and takes lost property, an implied bailment is created under common law: the finder owes a duty to take reasonable care of the pet and return it to its true owner. Two consequences follow. The owner must pay the finder compensation for caring for the pet before the owner has a right to recover possession. And a finder who takes care of lost property is generally a gratuitous bailee, liable for breach only by committing an intentional tort or an act of gross negligence.

That is forgiving toward ordinary mistakes, but it is not a licence. Berry cites a case in which a finder who authorized a veterinarian to euthanize a lost puppy “asserted both dominion and a right to ownership which he did not legally possess.”

Against everyone except the owner, you have rights, and duties

Berry writes that a finder who intends to care for a lost pet, and does, acquires a superior right to possession against everyone except the original owner, and can generally sue if someone wrongfully harms the pet. The other side is that a finder who adopts a lost pet also acquires a duty to keep other people safe from it. That matters most for dogs, because owners and keepers of a dog are often strictly liable for the damage it causes even if they acted reasonably. You may be on the hook for what an animal you have known for three hours does to a neighbor, so keep a found dog contained and away from other people and animals.

How long before it is yours

Berry lays out three routes, and the spread is the answer. Through a local impoundment statute, a private party can acquire a right to possession by adoption “in as little as a few days.” Under a lost property statute, in a few months. But a finder who takes the pet off the street instead may acquire a common law right to possession only after the passage of several years. Berry adds that a finder could bypass the long waiting periods by bringing the stray to a shelter and adopting it once the holding period expires. That describes how the schemes interact and is not a recommendation, and whether it is open to you depends on your state’s impoundment law and that shelter’s adoption policy. On Berry’s own account, the route through the shelter is faster than the route through your spare room.

Humane World for Animals gives the practical version. The finder does not automatically become the owner until satisfying state and local requirements. In “almost every state,” the animal is not owned by the finder until the holding period for strays has expired and the finder has made an attempt to reunite the animal with the original owner. Humane World also mentions steps toward proving ownership, such as vaccinations, a license, a collar and an identification tag.

Berry also warns that whether a finder is a bailee or a thief hinges on intent at the time: someone who knows the owner’s identity but does not return the pet or notify the owner could be guilty of theft. He quotes penal code provisions from several states. This page says nothing about what theft law does in any state. The point is that the line runs through what you knew and what you did about it, which is another reason to put the find on the record early and in writing.

Whether lost property law even applies to a pet is unsettled

Rebecca F. Wisch’s Overview of Lost Dog Legal Issues (2006) opens: “no state appears to directly address the issue of lost pets in its statutory code.” Of roughly twenty states and the District of Columbia with lost property statutes, she notes, New York and South Dakota specifically exclude domestic animals.

Berry records the leading case, Morgan v. Kroupa, 702 A.2d 630 (Vt. 1997). The Vermont Supreme Court declined to apply the state’s lost goods statute to a pet dog and fashioned its own rule. It held the trial court was within its discretion in awarding possession to a finder who diligently tried to locate the owner and cared for the dog for over a year. Berry says other courts have not accepted or rejected that holding, so its persuasiveness is unclear. It is not a template you can execute this week.

What Varies: Three States

As of August 13, 2026, the statute text in these three states read as follows. They show that “it depends on your state” is a real answer.

State and statute	What the finder must do	What happens next
Hawaii, HRS section 143-10, stray dogs	Every person who takes a stray dog into possession must immediately notify the animal control officer and release the dog on demand.	If a current-year license tag is attached, the officer notifies the licensee in writing, who may reclaim the dog without charge on demand within twenty-four hours. If nobody lawfully entitled to the dog claims it within nine days after the notice date, the dog may be sold or destroyed by the officer as provided in section 143-8 for unlicensed dogs.
Maine, 7 M.R.S. section 3913, stray dogs	A person finding a stray dog and taking control of it must take it to its owner if known or, if not, to the animal shelter designated by the municipality where the dog was found.	The shelter must accept the dog for 6 days unless it is in quarantine or has a bona fide lack of adequate space. When the 6-day period expires, ownership of the dog is vested in the animal shelter.
Virginia, Va. Code section 3.2-6551, companion animals	Applies to a finder who provides care or safekeeping, or retains the animal in a way that controls its activities. Within 48 hours, the finder must make a reasonable attempt to notify the owner if they can be found from a tag, license, collar, tattoo or other marking, and notify the public animal shelter serving the locality where the animal was found, giving name, phone number, description and location.	Subsection B requires the finder to comply with section 3.2-6503, the owner-level care statute. Subsection C sets a civil penalty per companion animal for violating the section.

The differences are not stylistic. Hawaii requires immediate notification and release on demand. Maine requires physical delivery to a specific building, the shelter designated by the municipality where the dog was found, which after an evacuation may not be the municipality you are standing in. Virginia gives you a clock and lets you keep the animal while it runs, but with a catch.

The Virginia catch

Subsection B of section 3.2-6551 says a finder who provides care or safekeeping, or retains the animal in a way that controls its activities, must comply with section 3.2-6503. That section requires an owner to provide adequate feed, water, properly cleaned shelter, space, exercise, care, treatment and transportation, and veterinary care when needed to prevent suffering or disease transmission. Violation is a Class 4 misdemeanor, with escalations for repeat violations. In Virginia, picking up a stray attaches an owner’s statutory care duties to you, enforceable as a crime, for as long as you have the animal. Whether your state does the same has no national answer, which is a good reason to ask before you settle in for a week of searching on your own.

Why only three states

A wrong duty on a page that is not legal advice is worse than no page, so this page shows three states rather than fifty. Wisch’s 2006 overview names Hawaii and Maine as the two states whose dog statutes mention a stray dog, and concludes that “these laws imply that the finder cannot retain the dog and must turn it over to municipal officials.” Virginia is written differently again. Read yours, or ask the agency that enforces it.

Two Things Every Version Has in Common

Two national animal organizations publish guidance for finders, and they converge on the same first move.

Tell the agency. Humane World tells a finder who intends to look for the owner personally to contact the local animal shelter or animal control office first, so the agency knows you have the animal and has a description in case the owner contacts them. The ASPCA’s short answer, under Where to Report Found Animals, stops at the same place: contact your local shelter for guidance on the best steps. Both route you to a local office, not a national rule.

Get it scanned. Humane World says to have the animal scanned for a microchip, calling it a quick ID check that could find the owner right away. The ASPCA’s found-animal passage does not mention scanning, so do not read the two as agreeing. A scan is less definitive than most people assume, and the AVMA explains why, below.

Why Holding the Animal Off the Record Breaks Reunification

The impulse to hold the animal for a few days and find the owner yourself is a good one. The animal is warm and fed, and a facility that is already overwhelmed after a disaster feels like the worse option. Here is the mechanism that decision breaks.

The owner is working the record, not the neighborhood. What our post-disaster lost pet workflow tells an owner to do in the first 48 hours runs through agency files: lost reports with animal control and every open and pop-up shelter, and return visits in person. An owner doing that perfectly still finds nothing if the animal was never entered anywhere.

In a disaster, members of the public put many animals on the record. NASAAEP, the National Alliance of State Animal and Agricultural Emergency Programs, publishes the 2023 Current Best Practices in Animal Emergency Management, produced under a USDA APHIS Animal Care cooperative agreement with the University of Kentucky and externally peer reviewed. Its Mass Care and Sheltering volume lists four ways animals arrive at a shelter: field rescue, found animals, owner drop-off and drop-off by a partner agency. For found animals it says “Citizens dropping off animals should complete a Found Animal Form”. Owner drop-offs and partner-agency drop-offs complete a Shelter Intake Form. Two of the four depend on a member of the public filling in a form, and you are one of them.

The record is what reunification runs on. NASAAEP says protocols must be in place from intake to discharge to ensure a “chain of custody” and to validate that the animal is returned to the appropriate owner. The national rabies Compendium says the same from the public-health side: its disaster-response section (Part I.B.8, page 512) lists “Maintain documentation of animal disposition and location”, including animals returned to owners, dead or euthanized, adopted, or relocated to another shelter. Animals move a great deal in a large event, which is a search problem with its own page: when a lost pet has been transported out of the county or the state.

The counterweight

Handing an animal in is not cost-free. Humane World, which tells you to contact the shelter first, also says agencies have severe budget and space limits, and gives the example of an injured stray whose surgery the agency cannot fund, where the animal may be euthanized to relieve suffering. That is a general constraint, not a prediction about your nearest facility. Ask it before you drive there: what happens to a found animal I bring in, what is your stray hold, and can I be listed as an interested adopter if nobody claims it.

What this site concludes

Humane World publishes the report-first instruction for a finder who wants to keep looking personally. Wisch observes that the Hawaii and Maine statutes imply a finder cannot retain the dog, so the Vermont Morgan approach of making reasonable efforts to find the owner while caring for the dog is not allowed under them. Humane World’s guidance assumes the choice is yours; Hawaii’s and Maine’s statutes do not leave it with you for a stray dog, and Virginia’s leaves the animal with you while attaching an owner’s care duties. The join below is this page’s own reasoning, not a published protocol.

Reporting the animal and housing the animal are two separate decisions, and only the first is urgent. Call the animal control agency covering the address where you found the animal, today, and put on the record what you have, where you found it and how to reach you. Then ask separately whether your state or ordinance lets you keep the animal at home while the search runs, and if so what the agency needs from you. Some states answer no, in the statute, in words. Some answer yes with conditions. Whatever the answer, it costs you nothing if you have already done the first, and the first is what the owner’s search depends on.

If you get only one call, make it the agency rather than a database. A database post reaches people who know to look at that database. An agency record is what every reunification guide walks a searching owner through, including ours.

Getting the Animal Scanned

A microchip is the fastest route from your garage to somebody’s phone. It is also more fragile than the folklore suggests.

The AVMA says “A pet microchip is not a GPS device and cannot track your animal.” A chip holds only a unique identification number, not the pet’s or owner’s information. When a lost pet is found, a shelter, animal control agency or veterinary clinic scans the chip and can enter the number into the American Animal Hospital Association’s Microchip Registry Lookup Tool, which identifies the registry or registries associated with the chip. The tool does not show owner contact information. It directs users to the registry, which contacts the owner or facilitates communication. So you do not get handed a name and number. If it works, an owner calls you or the facility.

Where to scan, and why to call first

The AVMA says universal scanners are widely used by veterinary clinics, animal shelters and animal control agencies. Widely used is not universally available, and the AVMA page does not mention police stations. After a disaster, when clinics are closed and shelters are running from a parking lot, call ahead and ask two questions: can you scan this animal, and is your scanner a universal scanner? The second matters because universal scanners detect all microchip frequencies, including ISO-compliant (134.2 kHz) and non-ISO-compliant (125 kHz and 128 kHz) chips, while some older scanners read only some of them.

A negative scan proves less than you think

The AVMA’s most frequently reported issue is migration, in which the chip moves from its original implantation site. It usually does not affect the pet’s health but can make the chip harder to find if a complete scan is not performed. The AVMA also lists situations that interfere with scanning: animals that will not stay still, long or matted hair at or near the chip site, excessive fat deposits where the chip is implanted, and a metal collar or one with a lot of metal on it.

A frightened stray after a disaster is likely to be the animal that will not hold still, with a matted, filthy coat. The AVMA’s remedy is a complete scan of the animal’s body with a universal scanner. If the first scan comes back empty, ask whether it was a complete-body scan with a universal scanner, and consider a second scan elsewhere a day later, when the animal has calmed down. A no-chip result is a reason to keep working the other channels, not a verdict that the animal is unowned.

The rabies tag is a second number

The AVMA says rabies tag numbers may also help find the owner, but getting that information can be difficult if veterinary clinics or local animal control or public health agencies are closed, while microchip registries can generally be reached online or by phone at any time. After a disaster the difficulty is turned up. If the animal wears a rabies tag, photograph both sides and give the number to the agency, which can work that channel over days in a way you cannot. Humane World’s instruction is to keep any identification such as a collar or tags. Do not throw away a filthy collar: it is evidence of ownership and carries two potential lookup numbers.

If reading this made you check your own chip, the microchip registration audit is the ten-minute version, and a QR code tag against a microchip covers the layer that works when the finder has a phone but no scanner.

What a Disaster Adds

If a declared emergency response is running where you are, you are dealing with a temporary system, not the everyday stray system. The Compendium’s Part I.B.8 on disaster response (page 512) notes that animals may be displaced and need emergency sheltering, that rabies vaccination and exposure histories are often unavailable, and that caretakers may lack training or preexposure vaccination. It lists measures a response should take, as recommendations to responders and not a promise about your county:

• Examine each animal at a triage site for possible bite injuries or signs of rabies.
• Isolate animals showing signs of rabies pending evaluation by a veterinarian.
• Ensure every animal has a unique identifier.
• Give a rabies vaccine to all dogs, cats and ferrets unless reliable proof of current vaccination exists.
• Provide facilities to confine and observe animals involved in exposures.
• Maintain documentation of animal disposition and location, and report human exposures to public health authorities.

If you were bitten and are weighing whether to say so, the system you are calling has a designed place to put that fact.

Where to take the animal when the usual place is shut

NASAAEP says the agency having jurisdiction should publish a dedicated phone number to manage lost and found animals, a dedicated and well-known location to bring stray animals, and a dedicated location for people to view found reports or look for lost animals. These are set up for your incident and announced on county and city emergency management channels, which is why you cannot bookmark them in advance. Start with the county or municipal animal control number and the local emergency management office. Ask where found animals are going right now and how a found report gets filed so a searching owner can see it.

One number is worth carrying into that call: NASAAEP says the agency may extend the hold time for stray animals, but “the usual limit is 15 to 30 days.” That is an ordinary range and an authority to move it, not your animal’s deadline. Ask the agency holding animals from your incident what its hold date is and who set it. The owner-side view of that clock is on proving a pet is yours and working the reclaim process, which is also the page to send an owner to if one contacts you.

The Photo-Match Layer

A national database works while you sleep, and a finder can file into it. Petco Love Lost’s help center says you can upload a photo of a cat or dog for free and its photo-matching technology immediately searches the national database of lost and found pet listings, looking at size, color, facial features and coat attributes. If no match is found, you can create a lost or found pet alert to share and get notifications. It is free, it searches immediately, and filing costs nothing even if the animal goes to a shelter an hour later. Its description is scoped to cats and dogs, so for a rabbit, bird, reptile or ferret the agency call carries the whole load.

Because matching runs on the photograph, take a better one than you think you need: the animal alone, straight on, well lit, plus a second shot of any distinctive marking. The owner-side detail is on the disaster lost-pet report page.

Documenting the Find

This section is the site’s own reasoning, and here is why. Virginia’s statute lists what you must hand the public shelter, NASAAEP’s appendices list what a shelter captures at intake, and the ASPCA publishes a flyer field list written for the owner’s poster. No source publishes a record for the finder to keep afterward, yet the systems that run on records say why one is needed: the Compendium tells responders to maintain documentation of disposition and location, and NASAAEP builds its reunification model on intake records and a chain of custody. The finder is often the first, and sometimes the only, person able to make that record.

An owner’s search does not reliably end in the first week. The peer-reviewed study of missing cats covered on our main lost-pet page, by Huang and colleagues in the journal Animals, reports that 34% of those cats were found alive by day 7, 50% by day 30 and 56% by day 61, rising to 61% by one year. Its curve flattens: the paper says there was little increase in the probability of being found alive after day 61.

Three scope facts travel with those numbers: the outcome counted is being found alive; it was a retrospective case series of self-selected people answering an online questionnaire about ordinary lost cats, with no mention of disasters; and it studies cats, while yours may be a dog. This page takes only the tail from it: the share found alive still rose from 56% at day 61 to 61% at one year, so some owners are still working the record long after the flyers come down. That reading is this page’s own. A record you can still read in November is the difference between an owner tracing the animal and hearing that somebody found a dog like that, somewhere, a while ago.

Write these down on day one, on paper as well as on the phone:

• Date and time you first saw the animal, and when you took control of it. Two different facts, and in a state with a clock like Virginia’s, the second starts it.
• The exact location, written so a stranger could find it: street address or cross streets, mile marker or landmark on a highway. An owner’s search radius is drawn from this field. It is for your record and the agency, not a public listing; if you found the animal at your own home, give a cross-street or block on anything public.
• Species, apparent sex, size, coat color and pattern, coat length, and every distinctive mark: scars, a notched ear, an odd nail, an unusual gait.
• The collar and tag, photographed on both sides, and kept.
• Every scan, with where and when it happened and what it returned, including negative results and whether it was a full-body scan with a universal scanner.
• Every agency contact: which office, which number, the name of the person you spoke to, what they told you and what to do next. This field decays fastest and matters most three weeks later.
• Dated photographs: the animal alone, straight on, plus markings and collar.
• What the animal did: whether it approached you or you caught it, whether it has shown any illness, and whether it has bitten or scratched anyone, which you report and do not just record.

Two more habits, also this site’s own:

Hold one identifying detail back from every public post. Pick something a photograph does not show. When someone says the animal is theirs, that detail is a question only a person who lived with the animal can answer. The main lost-pet page gives owners the mirror-image advice, so an owner and a finder who each hold a detail back can verify each other in one phone call.

Keep your home address off any found-pet poster, social post or public listing. A phone number does the whole job, and a public post is read by anyone, not only the person looking for their dog. No source cited here states this rule, so treat it as reasoning: a public post carrying an address tells strangers where an unfamiliar animal and the person holding it can both be found. The owner-side flyer fields are on the disaster lost-pet flyer and call log page.

What No Source Settles

None of the documents cited here imposes a national finder duty. NASAAEP recommends that citizens dropping off found animals complete a Found Animal Form, and the Compendium’s Part I.B.2 tells local authorities to put mechanisms in place “to facilitate voluntary surrender of animals”, but neither is a duty. That describes those documents and three statutes, not a fifty-state survey. What your state requires, how long before a found animal becomes yours, and what a shelter will do with the animal all vary by state, route or facility, so ask the local agency and the facility.

Your Found-Animal Checklist

• Do not create a second emergency. Pull fully off the road, hazards on, and stay in the car if the animal looks or acts threatening.
• If you were bitten or scratched, wash immediately and thoroughly, contact a health-care provider today, and report the exposure to your local health department.
• Set up the separation before the animal comes inside, and keep a found dog contained.
• Photograph the animal, both sides of any tag, and any distinctive marks. Keep the collar and tags, however filthy.
• Call the animal control or animal services agency covering the address where you found the animal. Ask what your state requires of you and where found animals are being taken during this incident.
• Get a microchip scan at a facility you have called ahead, and ask for a complete-body scan with a universal scanner. Treat a negative scan as inconclusive.
• File a free found report with a national photo-matching database if it is a cat or dog, in addition to the agency call.
• Start the written record on day one, and hold one identifying detail back from public posts.
• If an owner surfaces, verify with the detail you held back, and send them to the reclaim process.

Where to Go Next

This page is the finder’s side of the reunification cluster in our pet emergency playbooks. If an owner contacts you, send them to proving a pet is yours and working the reclaim process. If the animal may have traveled far, see when a lost pet has been transported out of the county or the state. If you end up keeping the animal, what a pet shelter checks at intake covers the documents it needs before the next emergency.

Then make one call today, not after a few days of looking. The agency covering the address where you found this animal is the first place every reunification guide sends a searching owner, and a five-minute call puts your find somewhere that search can reach it.