10 Million Dogs and Cats are Lost or Stolen Each Year. This Program Aims to Change That.

Quick Take

• One lost kitten's journey home required a stranger, an airline, and a flight attendant, and it all started with a single database profile. Read the kitten's story →
• The holiday most pet owners celebrate is also the most dangerous one for their animals, and the spike in disappearances is bigger than most people expect. See the July 4th danger →
• AI can now scan over 500 physical traits to identify your pet from a photo, and the way it gets smarter over time is what makes it genuinely different. See how AI learns →
• Shelters have improved nearly every animal welfare metric over the decades, but one stubborn number refused to budge until this tool came along. See the stubborn stat →

Kamala’s heart started racing when she realized that her 4-year-old dog, Max, had escaped from her backyard after a landscaper accidentally left the gate open. “I didn’t know where my big guy was,” said Max’s owner in an interview on YouTube. “Was he hit by a car? Did someone take him? Are they going to fight him? Will I ever see him again?”

Based in Philadelphia, Kamala had to act fast and immediately began searching her entire neighborhood and the local shelters. Within hours, she was reunited with Max, shortly after adding a profile for Max to the Petco Love Lost database. Several blocks away, two of Kamala’s neighbors, who had also created a Love Lost profile for the lost dog, saw him running by their house and managed to secure him in their yard.

A similar happy reunion happened in Dayton, Ohio, between Ame and her kitten Lucy, who had managed to get out of Ame’s house. Once she realized Lucy was missing, a friend of Ame’s suggested creating a profile of the cat on Petco Love Lost, and she received a match less than 24 hours later. Trying to stay warm, Lucy crawled under a car hood and went unnoticed by the driver, who drove to the mall with the kitten in their car. The driver only discovered Lucy when they heard her meowing after parking.

Face and Coat Recognition

Both reunions were made possible through Petco Love Lost, an AI-generated database that has helped reunite more than 250,000 pets nationwide with their families — facilitating a reunion every four minutes, in fact — since launching in 2021.

To help identify and locate lost pets, the free database uses AI photo-matching technology, along with more than 500 visual markers highlighting some of the physical characteristics of the missing animals.

Petco has also partnered with more than 3,000 shelters and animal control centers nationwide, which has expanded the reach and effectiveness of the Love Lost database in recovering and reuniting lost pets.

“It doesn’t always happen, but when it does happen, it’s really special, so we hope to make it less rare,” says Petco Love President Chelsea Staley. “Pets have a mind of their own, and pets go missing. It’s a fact of life, and we hope to make reuniting people with their pets less rare.”

Staley is proud of all the reunions that were made possible through Petco Love Lost, but there is one story that remains her personal favorite. A mother and daughter, facing hardship, relocated from Dallas to Nashville to live temporarily with a family member. They brought their kitten with them, but lost it while in Nashville and had to return to Dallas without their beloved pet. Luckily, a good Samaritan found the cat and posted it on Petco Love Lost.

To help reunite the kitten with its family, Petco partnered with Southwest Airlines. A flight attendant picked up the cat at the airport in Nashville and managed its transport and return to the family in Dallas.

“That shows first of all that it takes a village to save pet lives,” says Staley. “It was just such an inspiring story that so many people along the way were committed to getting that cat back to its family.”

Shelter Relief

As one of the largest funders of animal welfare in the country, Petco supports animal shelters and rescue groups nationwide. An annual grant offered to animal welfare agencies supports their services, along with other assistance provided by the Petco Love nonprofit.

Founded in 1999, Petco Love has since invested more than $440 million in adoption and life-saving efforts, helping decrease shelter intake numbers through education and spay/neuter programs, while increasing the national save rate and the number of adoptions.

The only metric that has slightly decreased in recent years is the shelter’s return-to-owner, or return-to-home, numbers. “When someone’s pet goes missing, they don’t know what to do; they panic,” says Staley. “Understandably, we don’t make our best decisions when we’re panicking.”

Shelters around the country are often inundated with missing pets that are never reclaimed. Staley says the Love Lost database can help alleviate the burden on these shelters, which are often operating at full capacity.

Petco Love acquired Finding Rover, which became the platform for Petco Love Lost in 2021. The AI-powered platform utilizes advanced facial recognition technology to pinpoint distinct features of pets, from their eye and coat colors to other attributes, and match them to community notices and shelter intake images. 

Since some people aren’t on social media or neighborhood apps like Nextdoor, the Petco Love Lost platform aggregates online data into a single source, which also connects to shelter software. “All of that data is consolidated into a single source of truth, which can then be searched across multiple platforms,” says Staley.

The Love Lost database is especially helpful around the July 4th weekend, when there is typically a spike in the number of missing pets.

Lost on the Fourth of July

An estimated 10 million dogs and cats are lost or stolen each year, and one in three pets will go missing in their lifetime, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Between July 4 and July 6, the number of reported missing pets can typically jump by 30 to 60 percent.

The number spikes during the Fourth of July weekend because pets are easily startled by fireworks. Flashing lights and unfamiliar noises often cause pets to dart out of front doors or backyards, escape through loosely secured or screened windows, or slip out of their leashes.

“We love the Fourth of July, but our animals don’t, so it’s challenging,” Staley says. To help ensure a safe return if a pet has gone missing, she recommends ensuring pets wear a collar and tag. “That’s your first line of defense,” she says, especially if their pet isn’t microchipped.

She also recommends closing the curtains and turning on lights inside the home to help reduce the impact of flashes from outside. Turning up the TV volume can also help drown out outside noises and keep pets calmer.

Staley adds, “We do think that Petco Love Lost is a tool in the toolbox, but we certainly want as many tools as possible to get our pets home.”

Digital Missing Pet Signs

Petco has since enhanced the Love Lost platform, which continues to evolve at “lightning speed,” says Staley. “I’m the president of this organization, and sometimes I don’t even know about the recent functionality that the team has rolled out,” she jokes. “They are brilliant, creative; they’re in it for the right reasons. The better the platform gets, the more pets we hope to reunite, so those pets never have to enter the shelter in the first place.”

Staley continues, “It’s a truly unique technology. It’s light-years ahead of any competition and uses machine learning, so the more matches it creates and the more feedback it receives from users, the more it learns and improves over time.”

As the Petco lost and found database evolves and expands, Staley hopes it will become a household name.

“When a pet goes missing, the first thing that people tend to think about is posting a picture on a telephone pole, and we don’t even have landlines anymore,” says Staley. “I want Petco Love Lost to become the household telephone pole of posting lost animals.”

To post a lost or found pet on the Petco Love Lost website, visit petcolove.org.