Your dog is missing: what to do in the first hour, and the first week
This question comes up in New Zealand pet groups most weeks, and the replies are usually kind, fast, and half-wrong
If your dog is missing right now, work down it in order. Most dogs are found within a kilometre or two of where they went missing, and most of them in the first few hours.
The first hour
1. Search your own property properly first.
Frightened dogs hide, and they hide badly — under beds, behind the wardrobe, in the back of the shed, under the deck, inside the garage you're certain you closed. SPCA advice on missing pets is blunt about this: scared, sick or injured animals will stay hidden for days. Take a torch even in daylight; you're looking into dark gaps, not across a paddock.
2. Walk the immediate area before you drive it.
Drive too early and you'll cover ground fast without seeing anything. Walk first, slowly, with high-value treats and a squeaky toy. Take someone with you if you can, so one of you can watch while the other calls.
3. Call calmly.
Your voice under panic doesn't sound like your voice. A dog who is already frightened, and possibly already in trouble somewhere, may go further away from a shouted name. Use the tone you'd use to call them in for dinner. Shake the biscuit tin.
4. Go out again at night.
Traffic drops, people go inside, and a hiding dog will move and respond when the world goes quiet.
Set up a scent station
Dogs navigate home by nose far better than by memory of route. Give them something to aim at.
- Leave out a piece of clothing you've worn all day — not clean laundry. Their bed and a favourite toy alongside it.
- Put it where they were last seen, or at your gate if that's the same place.
- Leave water. Don't leave food. Food out overnight in New Zealand pulls in cats, possums, hedgehogs and other people's dogs, and a defensive stray at your scent station is worse than no scent station.
Ring the right people — and know the seven-day clock
Your council, first. Stray and wandering dogs in New Zealand are picked up by council animal control and taken to the council pound. Under the Dog Control Act 1996 the council must hold an impounded dog for a minimum of seven days. After those seven days, section 69 lets the territorial authority sell, rehome, or destroy the dog. That clock starts the day they're seized, not the day you find out.
So: ring your council the same day, and if your dog could plausibly have crossed a boundary, ring the neighbouring council too. Then go in person, with a flyer for their lost board. Descriptions given over the phone fail constantly — "brindle" means six different things, breed guesses by staff are approximate by necessity, and a dog who's been out for two days does not look like the dog in your photo.
Then your vet clinics. In New Zealand, a member of the public who finds a dog most often takes it to the nearest vet to be scanned. Ring every clinic within a realistic radius, including after-hours and emergency clinics, and ask them to note your dog on their list.
Then your microchip registry. If your dog is chipped, log in to the NZ Companion Animal Register at animalregister.co.nz, confirm your phone number is the one you actually use, and change their status to missing. That flag is what makes the difference when a vet or a warden scans the chip — the scan tells them immediately that this dog is being looked for, and gives them your current number. NZCAR is on 0508 LOSTPET (0508 567 873). Their own 2025 data puts it plainly: animals not registered on NZCAR stay missing around 30% longer.
One trap worth knowing: your council's dog register and NZCAR are two separate databases. Your dog being registered and microchipped with the council does not mean the chip number is on NZCAR. If you've never had a NZCAR login, that's worth checking today, not on the day it matters.
Flyers still outperform almost everything
They feel old-fashioned. They work, because the person who finds your dog is often the person least likely to be in your Facebook group — an older neighbour, a courier, a farmer, someone driving past.
- Big. "LOST DOG" in letters readable from a car at 50km/h. Bright paper.
- One clear recent photo. Full body, in daylight.
- Hold back one identifying detail. The scar, the split ear tip, the odd toe. If someone rings claiming to have your dog, ask them to describe something you never published. This is your verification, and it costs nothing to set up.
- Two phone numbers, if you have two people who can answer.
- Where to put them: the council pound's lost board, every vet clinic reception, the dairy, the supermarket noticeboard, the school gate, the petrol station, the reserve entrances, and the intersections nearest where they went missing.
Laminate them or bag them if rain is coming. A washed-out flyer on day four is worse than no flyer.
The New Zealand places to post online
- NZCAR LostPet (animalregister.co.nz/LostPet) — free listings for lost and found animals, chipped or not, visible to the public and checked by vets and shelters.
- Pets on the Net — NZ's nationwide lost, found and rehoming database, running since 2002.
- Trade Me's Lost & Found section — free to list, and better trafficked than people expect.
- Neighbourly — the closest NZ equivalent to Nextdoor, and genuinely useful for street-level sightings.
- Facebook — your district's lost-and-found pets group (nearly every region has an active one), plus the New Zealand Lost Pet Register. Post the same photo everywhere so sightings can be matched.
- Pet Detective NZ — free advice, and paid search help, from people who do this professionally.
Update every listing when the search area changes. A three-day-old post with a stale last-seen location sends people to the wrong street.
Two things that go wrong
Don't let anyone chase your dog. When a sighting comes in, this is the single most useful thing you can say to the person who called: please don't approach, don't chase, don't call out. A frightened dog in flight mode does not recognise strangers, and often doesn't recognise owners either. Tell them to sit down on the ground, turn side-on, avoid eye contact, and gently toss treats away from themselves. Then ring you and stay put. Well-meaning pursuit is how a dog found two streets away ends up ten kilometres away, or on a road.
Assume anyone demanding money is a scammer. Lost-pet posts get scraped. The pattern is always the same: someone rings claiming to have your dog, has a reason they can't send a photo, and needs money first — for vet fees, for a courier, for a "holding fee". Never send money, a bank transfer, or gift cards to someone who hasn't proven they have your dog. Ask for the withheld detail. Ask for a photo taken right now with something of yours in frame. A real finder will hand your dog straight back.
If the news is bad
Most missing dogs come home. Some don't, and a few are found after a road accident, or by a council officer or contractor who has already had to deal with it.
If that's where you are: your vet clinic can arrange aftercare for a pet who has died away from home, including a dog found by the council or brought in by a stranger, and you are allowed to ask for the same options you'd have had on any other day.
The short version
If you only read one part of this:
- Search your own property with a torch, then the street on foot, then again after dark.
- Scent station: worn clothing, their bed, water — no food.
- Ring the council today and visit the pound in person. Seven days is the legal minimum hold, not a guarantee.
- Ring every vet clinic in range, plus your regional SPCA centre.
- Flag your dog as missing on NZCAR and check your phone number is current.
- Big flyers, one held-back detail, two numbers.
- Post to NZCAR LostPet, Pets on the Net, Trade Me, Neighbourly, and your district's Facebook group.
- Nobody chases. Nobody pays anyone up front.
PetAftercare works with vet clinics across New Zealand. We wrote this because the question comes up in NZ pet groups constantly and the answers that come back are usually written for another country. If your clinic wants printable copies of this checklist for their reception desk, get in touch — we'll send them free.