Humane Society of Beaufort County volunteers and shelter staff work hard to find homes for all the animals that come into the Betsy Bailey Nelson Animal Control Facility, and have increased adoption/rescue rates substantially over the last several years. According to animal control officials, 76 percent of animals that came into the shelter last year were adopted or rescued.

However, there are many animal lovers who may find a stray or lost dog or cat, and will not willingly take a lost animal to the shelter because, if not reunited with an owner or adopted/rescued, that 24-percent chance of euthanasia is too great. Not taking a found animal to the shelter is a choice. But with that choice comes responsibility because that animal may legitimately belong to someone else, a someone else who is missing the pet very much.

There’s often an assumption made when it comes to lost animals: because they look malnourished or uncared for, or have been spotted for weeks in the same place with no obvious home, the logical conclusion for many animal lovers is that either the dog or cat has no owner or had an owner who no longer wants the animal and dumped the former pet somewhere far away from home. In some cases, this very well may be true — in rural eastern North Carolina there are always stories of old hunting dogs turned out to fend for themselves when they’ve outlived their usefulness. But in others cases, it is not.

Animals can get lost. Some animals can catch a scent and be off tracking it in a heartbeat. They get scared and take off running until they can run no more (fireworks are a good example of a cause of this). Each time this happens, there is a pet owner, a family, a child, devastated by the loss of that pet.

The responsibility of anyone who finds a lost animal is clear: get the word out. Take a photo, write a description of the animal and when and where it was found, and post it on social media. But don’t stop there, because it’s also clear that information must be sent to the shelter, too. Email it in or post a flier on the lost-and-found animals board there. On a daily basis, part of the shelter staff and volunteers’ work is reuniting people with their lost animals. It happens all the time, and the shelter is the first place people look when trying to find a lost animal.

By contacting the shelter, any pet finder has a greater chance of finding a pet owner. It’s the right thing to do.