My Dog Is Missing, What Should I Do?

Right now

• Carefully search the immediate location and the routes your dog knows.
• Check the house, garden and any gate, gap or fence line your dog may have used.
• Ask neighbours to look and to open sheds, garages and outbuildings.
• Find a clear recent photo you can share.
• Note the exact last seen location and time, and keep that record accurate.

Over the next few hours

• Report the microchip as missing and confirm your contact details are current.
• Contact local vets, rescue centres and the council dog warden where appropriate.
• Raise awareness in local community and missing pet groups.
• Put up posters where they will genuinely be seen, such as junctions and entrances to paths.
• Log every reported sighting with a time, a place and who reported it.

Later that day

Revisit the information you have gathered. Separate confirmed sightings from rumours, then look at the likely routes and the barriers, such as main roads or rivers, that may have shaped where your dog went.

Only then decide whether the search area genuinely needs to widen. Our guide on what to do in the first 24 hours sets out the same day in more detail.

That evening

Plan an evening search around safety first, and keep the people searching in contact with each other so sightings are not double counted.

The following day

Resist expanding the search randomly. Repeat coverage of the areas your evidence supports, keep the awareness going and reassess when new information arrives. Our guide to how to find a lost dog explains how to manage that stage, and if nothing has been reported at all, see searching with no sightings.

Searching a large area?

If the ground left to cover is open and slow to search on foot, aerial search may be worth considering. Suitability depends on the location, the weather, airspace permissions and how well the search area is defined. See drone search for missing dogs.