Florida Dachshund Rescue

Lost pets find hope

Emmy the dachshund got loose during a family photo shoot. Simba the cat was startled during a bad storm, ran out of the house and didn’t come back. Dylan the bichon frise escaped through the backyard fence. Gary the cat escaped from a porch in the chaos following a house fire.

No matter how it happens, pets get lost every day. Try as she might, Judy Charuhas of Winter Park can’t stop dogs and cats from going missing, but she can do everything in her power to get them found.

In late 2009, Charuhas, along with her neighbor Shelley Heistand, founded WinterParkLostPets.com — a lost and found pet database — to help do just that.

“It takes one open gate to lose a pet, but a community to find it,” Charuhas said.

Emmy, Simba, Dylan and Gary are just four of the more than 200 pets the website has helped reunite since its creation. And with satellite Lost Pets sites in the works around Central Florida, Charuhas said WinterParkLostPets.com is just getting started. WaterfordLakesLostPets.com is scheduled to launch by July 1, and other community partnerships are on the horizon.

How it works

When a pet is lost or found, Charuhas said that an owner or finder can visit the website and upload the animal’s last-known whereabouts, a brief description, a photo and the owner’s contact information — all for free.

This process, Charuhas said, may sound familiar to general open posting websites such as Craigslist. So what does Winter Park Lost Pets have that those don’t? For starters, a human on the other end.

“We’re different from Craigslist in that we verify postings,” she said. “I go through and check each listing and am in contact with all the posters.”

Once a post is live, visitors can automatically generate a lost or found poster to hang the old-fashioned way around their neighborhood with the same information that is posted on the website.

Also, once Charuhas verifies a post, she blasts out an email alert to the websites’ members that a pet has either been found or is missing. Copied on the emails are local vets, rescue groups and shelters, which can now be on the lookout.

This, she says, is the key to WinterParkLostPets.com’s 80 percent success rate for reuniting pets listed on the site.

By alerting different members of the community, she says the website is in effect creating its own community of, as she calls them, “pet patrollers.

Belle | Florida Dachshund Rescue – FLDR

Email:  mvlachney@gmail.com

Hi I am Belle, I am an energetic little girl. 6 weeks ago when I came to my foster home I wasn’t very healthy and didn’t feel well. Now I have so much energy that I just love to run in the yard and wrestle and play with my foster sisters.  I also have a brother that happens to be a cat, he is kind of a grouch because I want to play with him but he doesn’t want to play, so I just keep jumping around him and barking at him. I guess you could say I get along with cats as long as they get along with me. I am wonderful with kids. I am always with one of my sisters and would need to go to a home with an energetic playful dog. Since I love to run and run and run I would like to have a fenced in yard to run and play in.

My potty training is going well but I am not reliable yet, I was not properly potty trained in my prior home, but we are working on it. I have learned the doggy door, it is so cool to just run through it. My foster mom tried me in a crate the first night and let’s just say it didn’t go well, so I sleep in bed with her.  Well that is all I have for now except that I am so much fun and not to mention soooo cute!!!! I would love to meet you and see if we were meant for each other. Now I will turn it over to my foster mom, she has a few things to say.

Belle is a very affectionate little girl. She has come a long way in the 6 weeks she has been with us. Although Belle has recovered from malnutrition and the negative effects of improper care, she still does have some problems. Belle was born with a swallowing problem, there is a long name for it but basically the muscle in her throat doesn’t work right and she can choke very easy if not properly monitored.  When she came to me her prior owner did not tell me about her problem and unfortunately I fed her food the wrong way and she did have a very bad choking event. We took her to the vet and they explained to us what they thought was happening. They didn’t have the right machine to fully diagnose her, so they recommended that we take her to the University of Florida in Gainesville to have the test done. We spoke to Gainesville and the test is about $700 and they said that even if they diagnosed the problem there really wasn’t any real effective treatment for her. They recommended that we feed her the smallest food we could get and feed her by hand to keep her from eating too fast. This has worked very well and it only takes about 4-5 minutes twice a day to feed her. She eats very well and has gained 1 ½ pounds in just 5 weeks. She is otherwise a very normal loving, sweet and fun little girl. I have become very attached to her and would love to keep her. But I know there are many other dogs that need my help, so I will let Belle go to the right person and I know you are out there.

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