We dont mean to make you scared but most moms and dads get real worried if they cant find their dogs and run all over the place looking for us. There are things moms and dads can do to find us. One of my cyber friends was lost for 4 hours and a nice lady on the list my mom is on told her mom how to search for her. This lady said my mom could put that here. So make sure your mom or dad reads it just in case!! If these dont work, tell your mom or dad to call the Rescue people (mine would be the German Shepherd Dog Rescue) 'cause someone might have sent us to them if we are gone too long. They should call the Animal Shelter too, for we might be there. Please dont let us stay there too long for we'll get homesick and lonely without you. Better still, make sure our gates are always closed and dogfaces - dont wander away from home - not everyone likes dogs!!

Think about how she normally behaves when you let her off-lead in a familiar area: is she a bolter, or a wanderer? A dog that's a bolter will generally travel a greater distance from familiar turf before it realizes it's no longer in it's territory than a wanderer...A bolter will also be more inclined to travel in a fairly straight line until it discovers it is lost. Wanderers tend to weave about, sniffing and distracted, within a fairly tight radius of their starting point. All right, so do you have a map of your community--one that shows all the side roads as well as main ones? Grab it...look at the scale, and approximate a five-mile radius from your place. Chances are that she's still well within that area--more likely, she's within a 2.5 mi radius given the short time frame so far.

Within the specified radius, are there any places you know of that would be *especially* dog-attractive? Farms? Garbage dump? Schools? Parks? Check these places, and take an off-the-cuff flyer with you--don't waste time making it look professional, all it needs to do is give a basic description of the dog, whether she's approachable or not (important!), and all phone numbers where someone who can fetch her can be reached (enlist friends/neighbors/etc, just in case you're not near a phone) If she's not in any of these places, leave the flyer at the sites, in case she shows up after you've left.

Also leave at such places: some food & water, and soiled item of your clothing (T-shirt, etc.) If she does show up at that place, you're better off if she hangs around there thinking you'll be back, than if she just keeps wandering.

Work the radius area from the outermost edges inward, preferably in as circular a fashion as possible. When calling her, don't leave the area too quickly--allow her sufficient time to respond if she's a fair distance away from where you happen to be standing.

Keep looking for as long as possible; press every person that you know, or even think your dog will come to, into service, too, so you can cover more ground at the same time.

Hopefully, all of this will be file-info only, because you'll already have her back by the time you see this...but just in case, this is what has worked for me, and what patterns seemed to exist, when I was dealing with Siberians and cross-bred sled dogs that arrived with bad habits of breaking out of kennel runs and taking off...

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