FindToto.com Finds Lost Pets Such as Ollie, an Elderly Golden Retriever

We love happy endings, and the folks at FindToto.com do too.

A few months ago on a Saturday afternoon, Elliot Cahn, a lawyer and music executive who lives in Oakland Hills, California, noticed that his aging Golden Retriever, Ollie, had somehow gotten out of the house and was missing. "I was worried because Ollie's fourteen years old and losing his hearing. It's rural, coyote territory where I live," Cahn tells Paw Nation. Unfortunately, Ollie's identification tag had fallen off his collar the day before and Cahn hadn't replaced it yet. The elderly dog wasn't microchipped, either.

Cahn got into his car and drove around the neighborhood, hoping to spot his dog, but as afternoon turned to evening, Ollie remained missing.

Early Sunday morning, Cahn looked online for local animal shelters, but none were open yet so he decided to do an Internet search for "lost pets." Cahn came upon FindToto.com, a service that helps find missing animals by sending a broadcast telephone message to homes surrounding the area where a pet went missing. It's something of an AMBER Alert for lost pets.

"I thought, 'What the heck,'" Cahn recounts to Paw Nation. Since he lived in a rural area with few homes, he decided to purchase the smallest "alert package" for $70, which would call 250 of Cahn's neighbors. (FindToto.com offers six "alert packages" at varying prices. The most expensive plan costs $875 and calls 10,000 homes.) He entered all of his pertinent information at FindToto.com including the address where Ollie went missing, the pet's name and description, what he wanted the "lost pet" message to say, and his contact information.


"An hour and a half later, one of my neighbors called and said, 'I think I found your dog,'" says Cahn, who was surprised that FindToto.com worked so remarkably well. A young couple coming home on Saturday evening had spotted Ollie wandering the dark roads. They brought the aging dog home with them, where Ollie made himself comfortable among the family's other two dogs and small baby. They got a call Saturday morning alerting them of the lost dog and called the contact information provided in the message. Cahn rushed over to the couple's house with a bottle of wine as a thank you present. "Ollie looked great," he says.

Sadly, not all pet searches turn out so lucky. FindToto.com was enlisted to help search for Jessica Simpson's maltipoo, Daisy, who was snatched by a coyote on September 14 and is presumed dead.

"Our success rate is right around eighty percent," Colleen Busch of FindToto.com tells Paw Nation. The company has helped find over 1,800 missing pets since the company's inception nearly two years ago. "Even if a pet is found and it's deceased," Busch continues, "it gives the pet owner a sense of closure and peace of mind that they can stop searching."

Cahn and Ollie ended up interviewed by local television news stations after their successful reunion. "I tried to get Ollie excited about being on TV," says Cahn, "but he just fell asleep on camera." Perhaps Ollie felt it was much ado about nothing. He has since turned 15.

Tags: finding lost pets, FindingLostPets, FindToto.com