Season 8 Episode 13: Canadian Dangers, Cute Snakes, and Kathy Pobloskie About the Science of Lost Dogs

The animal that causes the most aggressive wildlife incidents in Canada is probably not the one you’re picturing. We break down a Frontiers in Conservation Science study that tracks thousands of encounters and lands on a surprising culprit: elk, especially around campgrounds. We talk through why “cute” and “safe” are not the same thing, how seasonality can change animal behavior, and the simple hiking habits that lower the odds of a scary surprise on the trail, whether you’re camping, wildlife watching, or walking with your dog.

Then we shift into pet science with a study from Anthrozoos on snakes and kids. The key detail is not just what children think, but how fast a parent’s real-time comments can shape fear and “othering.” If you’ve ever wondered how to talk about animals you dislike without passing that fear on, this part will stick with you.

Finally, we’re joined by Kathy Plobloski, director of Lost Dogs of Wisconsin, for a practical, science-informed guide to finding missing pets. We cover Pet FBI, why centralized lost and found databases matter, why old-school flyers still reunite the most pets, and the concept of survival mode, where even a bonded dog may avoid you. We also dig into shelters, stray hold timelines, and microchip tips that only work if your info stays updated. If you’ve ever loved an animal, this conversation is worth saving and sharing. Subscribe, share the episode with a pet parent, and leave us a review so more families can find these tools when they need them.

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Transcript

Welcome To The Science Podcast

SPEAKER_03 0:09

Hello, science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zakowski.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

And I'm Chris Zakoski.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

We're the pet parents of Bunsen Beaker, Bernoulli, and Bricks.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

The science animals on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right spot.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

So put on your safety glasses.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

And hold on to your tail.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

This is the Science Podcast. Hi everybody, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 13 of season eight. How are you enjoying the summer, Chris?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

I love the summer, Jason. And today was super hot. So the weather is cooperating after we had all of that rain. So it's we're enjoying the sunshine and getting things done. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

That's

Life With A Dog Cone

SPEAKER_03 0:58

right. Now, I have uh just a disclaimer. You may hear some panting or a little bit of rustling. I have Bernoulli in his cone, and he is a big suck right now. He's all done being in his cone. I think you were all done him being in his cone days ago, Chris.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Jason, he comes at you like a battering ram, and he doesn't mean to because that's just who he is. And usually he can kind of sideswipe you as opposed to treat you like, I don't know, like he's clearing snow with a snow blade, and his cone is basically a satellite dish coming at you, and you can't get around it because he's so massive. And if we're in the kitchen and you try and get around, he deeks and dodges in the direction that you want to go. And it's a lot, it's a lot. And I don't know, it hits my legs at a really inopportune place where it's like scrapey and it's scrapey and not a lot of fun. Not a lot of fun, but not a lot of fun, a lot of fun for him either, because it's like, ugh, and then it's like jams in the neck.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

I'm sure it's also gonna cramp on his summer, too. Like he's this has been day eight. This is day eight of being in the cone. And I'm sure I would much rather have him be running around and swimming and stuff and dog diving, but nope, he's gotta he's got a heel. But it's it is what it is. All dog parents, all pet parents go through things that are annoying like

What We Cover Today

SPEAKER_03 2:33

the cone. But let's talk about what's on the show this week. In science news, we have a Canadian news article from Frontiers and Conservation Science about the most aggressive wildlife incidents in Canada, and it's probably not what people think. At least it wasn't what I thought.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

No, it wasn't what I thought either. It was a bit of a surprise. But I do have a caveat question that I'm gonna ask when we talk about the article.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Sounds good. Now, in pet science, we have an interesting article in Anthro Zeus about snakes. And Adam, our son Adam had a snake named Actus. Not my most favorite pet, but you know what? I think the article is kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

That's good because Actles made an appearance in Tex from Bunsen as the Nope Rope.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

Yeah, the nope rope.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

And that's evident of your feelings for her. As much as you were encouraging Adam to enjoy animals, you were not really enjoying the Alba the albino ball python that she was, and you did not like how she ate her thought-out food by constricting it. You just were all things no with her. Nope rope.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Yeah. Our guest in Ask an Expert is Kathy Plabloski, who is the director of the Lost Dogs of Wisconsin. I had a really great talk with her about what happens when animals go missing, and we tackle it from a scientific perspective. It's an awesome discussion. All right, let's get on with the show. There's no time like Science Time.

Aggressive Wildlife Encounters In Canada

SPEAKER_03 4:18

This weekend's science news. Let's start off with some dangerous things out in the Canadian white wildlife. Now, I've gone camping many more times than you, Chris. You are not so much a camper, you're more of a city slicker hotel girl.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Absolutely. Absolutely. I am not a camper at all. Although I have gone camping with you, and I think I would try it if the vehicle's nearby. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. You love it so much, and I just don't want to deprive you of the joy that you get from camping, but it definitely is not my favorite thing.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

It's okay. Um, there's things that I really miss about camping because my family camped a lot, and then we backpacked a lot to the mountains with tents and put them up for a couple days. It was awesome. Hard work though. Yeah. So, anyways, our our study comes published recently on July 2nd from Frontiers and Conservation Science by a biologist at the University of York, and it was all about aggressive wildlife incidents in Canada between 2010. Which animal do you think, before you read this, would have the most aggressive incidents?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

The ones that are in the news more frequently definitely are the grizzly bears or the black bears coming out of the Canonascus. They definitely have the bears tagged and they watch them, and there's the big boss bear. Yeah, you always hear about the bears. In fact, Jason, when we drove on that road where it was supposed to lead us to Mount Rosson for our hike, and it didn't, and I took you there twice with the all trails map that the map was wrong to get you to the wrong spot. I just said at the corner, you're like, Kristen. And I said, Jason, just leave me to the bears. Let the bears eat me.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

I know, and now Adam and Annalise tease you with that whenever there's a mistake. Because we travel quite a bit with them now, and there's always errors with GPS, and it leads us into dead ends, and that's now something the three of them say. The three of you guys say, Leave me for the bears.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Leave me for the bears, just leave me on the side of the road. You weren't frustrated with me, but I think you were, because you're like, we've been here before. I recognize that landmark, and I'm like, oh no, no, all trails map won't lead me astray. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

I would have thought, I would have thought dangerous encounters would be bears. Honestly, that's what I thought. Not with the study phone. The five animals included were black bears, grizzly bears, elk, coyotes, and mule deer. Now you'll notice moose are missing. Moose are crazy dangerous. But they are very what's the best word for they're solitary. They don't like being around people. It's not like they're gonna go hang out near campgrounds. They don't like that. So even though, as you would say in Canada, the moose moose will murk you, that damn moose over there, those moose over there are gonna murk you. No, they're the chances of a aggressive moose attack is very low. You can't do anything about it if they attack you, anyways.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

But not zero. Not zero. The chances are not zero.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

And that's what's terrifying. Aggressive was defined as chasing, attacking, or bluffing a charge. They didn't just look at which animals caused incidents. The team cross-referenced animal species with what activity the person was actually doing. Were they camping, hiking, were they just watching the wildlife? Were they just standing on the trail? Now here's the kicker.

Why Elk Top The List

SPEAKER_03 8:06

Chris, which were the biggest risk to people in Canada?

SPEAKER_00 8:11

The elk.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Yeah, elk.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

The elk were involved in 62% of all incidents, which is more than half of nearly of the nearly 3,000 total cases. Now, this is surprising because elk are herbivores. So you wouldn't think that they would be looking to eat humans as a snack. And they're part of a herd species, and they don't actually trigger that same instinctive fear like a predator does. So a bear or a coyote would definitely trigger more of that instinctive fear. People may underestimate elk aggression precisely because they're not carnivorous and they they look like cute little ungulates in the forest. But that's the real risk. And when they cross-referenced the animal species with the activity, they found that elk and camping was the riskiest combination. So elk likes to show up in your camping community. They showed up in 84% of campground incidents that that happened. So what could a likely explanation be? Canada's peak camping season overlaps with elk mating season and their calving season as well, which those mamas want to protect their babies. So those both periods are at a time of heightened aggression. And you know what? You could have a little cute animal right by you grazing near you, but that could actually be a more dangerous event than you expected. Cute doesn't necessarily mean tame, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:57

No, why not friend? If friend shaped, isn't that the saying?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

That is the saying. Elk are very pretty.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Yeah, elk are very pretty. And there they are everywhere in the Canonas in in near where we live in Alberta, Canada. There but another thing too, the study doesn't mention, but I think this is just from me camping. Campgrounds have to be level, right? You have to have some kind of flat land for the campground to be level in. And when you just when you knock down trees to make room for camp campsites, then grass grows up, and I think it just gives them more food. That's just my conspiracy theory. Grizzly bears did account for 14% of the incidences. So of the remaining, 14% of the incidences were from grizzly bears, and about 13% were black black bears. So just about the same. And the bear-related incidences were usually occurred around low-impact activities like hiking or wildlife watching, not camping. So it's not like the bears were coming into your campground and mauling you in your tent, though that happens on a very rare occasion. Usually people are just wandering down the trail and the bear reacts aggressively when they're startled. So if you're walking down the trail, make noise, talk with your friends, have bear bells if you're solo, play music, even though that's uh an annoying thing to be blasting music while you're walking down the trail. So get some bear bells so you don't startle a bear. Because the bear is using the trail too, because it's way easier than walking through the bush. And then you come around the corner, the bear comes around the corner, and it's like I'm gonna eat your face. Yeah. Now, this doesn't mean that bears are safer, Chris. We do see tourists in the Canonascus, and they will stop and get out and take photos of bears. And I'm like, that is dangerous. So bears are adorable, they are very cute, and bear cubs are among the sweetest-looking things on the planet. They are not safe though.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

So definitely not. Now, the study did look at uh a couple more species, like the coyotes and mule deer, and both of those species were involved in fewer incidents overall. But interestingly, mule deer incidents were most often triggered by dogs. So if you're on the trail with your dog, keep your dog on leash. But dogs do resemble the mule deer's natural deer will respond in defense, going, oh no, I'm going to be eaten. What? Strike first, ask questions later.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Yeah, exactly.

Practical Tips For Hiking Safety

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Now, the uh they did make recommendations in the study, and all of these recommendations are like so common sense for like somebody like me who's been out in the wild. This is just how we live when we go into the mountains or when we camp. If you're gonna hike, make sure you try to hike in groups or make noise, and if you're solo, make your own noise. That decreases surprise encounters with wildlife all of the time. When I'm out walking with the dogs and I'm by myself, when I go down into the creek where a moose could be or whatever, and maybe we'll startle it, I just randomly start talking loud to the dogs. And 99 times out of 100, there's no moose down there. Though we have come across moose a couple times.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

We have come across moose on the trail.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

Yeah, and they just run away. But they I would run away too. We we've actually stopped if we've seen them, and that that's the end of the walk because I'm not messing around with moose. And if you are in the mountains, keep your dogs on a short leash. Uh, obviously, people have seen our social media videos, Chris, and our dogs aren't on a leash. And we do get occasional comments about how come your dogs aren't on a leash? And I guess it's just because we're close to civilization, we're not camping, it's on our property. So it's like a big off-leaf, off-leash dog park.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

One of the things that I was curious about in terms of this study is if you have an encounter with an elk versus an encounter with a bear, which one is going to take your health bar and drop it to critically low or off? That's a dungeon crawler crawler. I know. Glad you caught that. New achievement. You hung out with an elk and it didn't kill you. But that was my question. Because if you're out and about and you do come across a startled bear, what are the chances versus a startled elk that could definitely rough you up? But what are the chances of survival? Which the study did not go into.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

I can tell you.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

So that's excellent. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

I can tell you. So those like the chance of you being killed by elk is low. So while they do make up the vast majority of the injuries or the aggressive encounters, they're gonna try to scare you and then run away. They'll raise up their bat raise up and smack you. I would have to check to see if anybody in Canada has died from an elk attack. Maybe. But bear attacks do are fatal sometimes. And that's because they're predators. They've got the claws and the teeth to do the damage. There's a viral video. If you want to watch it, everybody, some guy was taking photocraphs of a bison, and bison are huge. And it was chasing this guy around a tree, this older guy, and it just yeeted him into the air, and he was seriously injured. He survived, but that guy was that guy was chucked airborne like Johnny Knoxville and jackass.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

So yeah. I saw that today. That was on my social media. Yeah, that was on I was gonna bring that up actually. And I'm glad you brought it up. But yeah, it's a social media viral video. Hopefully, it's not AI because during the Olympics there was a lot of AI videos with the oh, look at this animal running up the side of the hill. And it wasn't true, but people were confused and convinced millions of views to get those clicks and those the that dopamine hit.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Yeah. So I'm just doing a quick search about the elk deaths in Canada. Zero. They cause the most aggressive encounters, as the study found, but there have been zero deaths in the last 20 years. So there you go.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

So scary and risky aren't the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

All right, that's science news for this

Snake Pets And How Fear Forms

SPEAKER_03 16:55

week. This week in Pet Science, we are gonna talk about a pet we have not talked about very much, and that is snaky snake pets. Adam had a albino ball python how many years ago? Eight years ago, nine years ago? Was Bunsen a puppy?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Bunsen was a puppy.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Bunsen was a puppy when we got this snake. Can you tell people about the snake? I forget the snake story because I was not on board with the snake. This is a pet that happened regardless of what my input was.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

We went to the reptile show here in Red Deer.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

That's so fun, by the way. Not okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Okay, the kid both kids like to go. So Duncan had Bearded Dragons, and then then I took Adam and Duncan to the reptile show in Red Deer, and Adam on multiple occasions was drawn to the snakes. And we had a connection in Calgary. Their store is no longer open, but they said, you know what, there's a snake down there, come down and get her. And you know what? We drove up and well, we drove down and we did, and we got her and set her up in in the enclosure, and we learned a lot about snakes.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Yeah, I learned a lot about snakes. Hey, how would you like to have a 16-foot snake in your house?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

He wasn't that long.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

No, but it got big. Now, I think the irony is that what she did grow, yes. Yeah, she grew exponentially, like the game snake, where you eat the thing and your snake gets bigger. That's literally how this thing grew. It was a video game almost. Anyways. So the irony, as I was gonna say, is the study was looking at I guess the perceptions and the framing of how parents can change young children's feelings towards snakes. In many cultures, snakes are one of the most feared and vilified animals. Now, we have we have snakes in Alberta. We have little garter snake guys, and then in the Badlands, there's rattlesnakes. I don't mind garter snakes, they're cool. I am not scared of them at all. And I would not be scared of a rattlesnake if I saw it either. Honestly, I don't think I would. I'm not scared of snakes. I think it was just having it in the house was weird.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Okay, but Jason, remember our honeymoon when we were walking through the temperate rainforest and we were walking along the path, and I was like, ooh, snake, and you just would have had a heart attack.

SPEAKER_03 19:34

Because I thought you were it was a bear that was gonna get us. You're like, ah, and then I was like ready to fight the bear, and you're like, snake, and this huge snake slithered a clock across. I don't even know what it was. What kind of what kind of rainforest snake that was in Vancouver Island. Anyways, back to the study. There is a very little research that looked at how those fears take root in kids. And because very little studies were done on this, that's where this one comes from, which was published on Anthrozoos.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

So the research was set up in a very specific way. The study focused on five-year-old children in urban North America. And researchers wanted to know how kids conceptualize snakes compared to other animals and compared to humans. So the key variable that they tested was does objectifying or negative language about snakes change how kids think about them? Objectifying language is language that frames snakes as more object-like or other rather than as living relatable creatures.

How Parent Talk Changes Kids

SPEAKER_00 20:43

So it versus, oh, look at Acklas, she's so cute. So in the first study, there were 48 children, and their average age was five and a half, and they were read a storybook about snakes with or without objectifying language. So in the first finding, children strongly tended to see snakes as similar to other animals, regardless of how the storybook was written or the language that was used in the storybook. But finding number two, however, showed when parents used negative language while looking at the snake photos with their child, it reduced the kids' tendency to see snakes as similar to humans. Now, the storybook language didn't matter that much, but the parents' real-time negative commentary did.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

Oh, like the storybook says, look at Atlas, she's so cute. And then the dad that's reading it says, not.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Pretty much. Definitely in our conversations, if I think about how I just was like, oh, I'll help you feed Atlas, and oh yeah, she is so cute. Look at her red eyes. And you were having none of that.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

Look at her bang her head against the side of the The cage. And if she escapes, she'll murder you.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yeah. So your language was very definitely negative towards the snake.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

But Adam's only I was so scared that snake would escape.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

The researchers did some more studies to dig deeper because they ran two follow-up studies to pressure test what they found in their first study. So the study, the second study, they used, they interviewed the second study sample was 40 children and their average age was about five. And the third study was 24 children, and their average age was about five and a half as well. So both of those studies tweaked the tasks to isolate what was actually driving those original results. But dun dun dun, they found an accidental discovery.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

Kids were unknowingly already prime primed about all of this about snakes before the actual test. So that means before the test, they've already had exposure and conversations that shifted their beliefs towards the objectifying language that snakes are freaky and gross. Sorry, that's my objectifying language. But yeah, they so the parents got to the kids before the researchers did. So they found the kids were already had preconceived notions about snakes. The default view of kids about snakes may be a lot more negative than we assume. There could be built-in evolutionary reasons why we don't like snakes. We're just kind of predisposed to not enjoy them. And that's because maybe our ancestors got ate by a bunch of snakes and they're dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

But you know what? Just a small shift in the amount of neutral factual exposure and discussion about snakes is enough for kids to maybe see them more positively or more similar to other animals. So the snake-specific sphere or othering isn't necessarily a fixed thing. It's a growth mindset. It's a malleable mindset, especially early on.

SPEAKER_03 24:13

And it's amazing. Like we teach kids, but high school kids, and there are kids in my chemistry class I would never thought in a million years are head over heels for reptiles and snakes. And that's wonderful. I know I'm being negative and sarcastic about spiders and snakes and reptiles and things like that. But if they bring you joy as a pet owner, that's great. And Adam was very Adam was very sad when she died, too.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

I was too. But it the study basically suggests how parents and educators, how they talk about snakes, even briefly, could meaningfully shape a child's relationship with that fear later in life. And that's one thing that I'm big about. It's like being able to face your fears, and maybe they won't go away, but managing that so it doesn't become so large later on. Just having that fear of a snake. You don't want it to be di debilitating.

SPEAKER_03 25:10

No, just think about how kick-ass Indiana Jones would be if you didn't have a snake phobia. That's true. Why is it got to be snakes? All right. Let us know in the like some of the podcast hosting sites you can dri drop a comment. And we should probably do this on social media about how many people have reptile pets. That's cool. All right, that's pet science for this week.

Meet Kathy From Lost Dogs

SPEAKER_03 25:36

It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast. And I am thrilled to invite to our show Kathy Plobloski, who is the director of Lost Dogs of Wisconsin. Kathy, hello. Good morning. How are you? I'm great. You're the director of an organization in Wisconsin. Is that where you're calling into the show from? Yes, that is correct. Yes. Born and raised or moved around in the States? No, I'm actually from Edmonton, Alberta. Oh hey, that's just north of us. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

So and then I grew up in in Edmonton, moved north of Edmonton for several years, and then met my husband

Pet FBI Explained Simply

SPEAKER_01 26:16

who is an American. And so we moved several times in the United States. And our last move was to Wisconsin, where we are now.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Oh, that's very cool. I did my science degree and my education degree at the University of Alberta in Emmett.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

So really. I went to NEAT.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

My son is there. My son is in Emmetton right now, finishing his science degree. There you go. Not often we have guests that have a connection to Emmett.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

No, but we are here to talk about something called Pet FBI. Um, and I was wondering, could you talk to us a little bit about it? I could say what my research is, but you're the expert. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

So Pet FBI is a nonprofit organization. They're based out of Columbus, Ohio, and they have actually been around since 1998. So they are probably the one of the oldest, if not the oldest, web-based lost and found pet databases out there. All volunteer run, totally free to use. And just for an example, in 2025, they took in 71,000 reports of lost and found pets. So even though they're based out of Ohio, they you can use Pet FBI whether you are in Canada or the United States. And it's just an amazing resource to list your lost pet, produce the flyers that you're going to want to distribute when your pet is missing. They do they have all kinds of services. They provide you potential matches via email. They also help get the word out to their what they call their special agents. That's anybody that's signed up in an area to receive email alerts. They also send out text messages to the owners with tips and suggestions to help them find their lost pet. They provide social media links when a pet owner is panicky. Having all of these resources available at almost instantaneously is a huge help because they don't have to work their way through that. They've got a lot of resources available to them. For one thing, I think Nextdoor is available where you are, is it not? Is there a social media site called Nextdoor? It's very popular here in the States.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

Next door? I'm not familiar. I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

It's like a Facebook, but it's like a neighborhood Facebook. So and neighborhoods join. So there's one thing there is like there is a link that you can instantly get your pet posted to nextdoor, and that's your immediate neighborhood. Oh, I like that. Yeah, just all kinds of things like that.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Um it's all-encompassing. It's not just uh you can look for pictures of possible lost pets. It's it's quite robust.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

It's very robust, yes. And then of course we have volunteers that run Facebook pages in every state and province. So they are there available. The listing automatically gets posted to the appropriate Facebook page. And whether it be a lost cat or a lost dog, it gets posted and then it can be shared from there. So there's just a lot of things going on behind the scenes that can help you technology-wise when your pet is missing.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

Now, is there a need for this?

Why Facebook Posts Are Not Enough

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Like, I I do see because of our large social media accounts, like every day there's a post about some dog that has gone missing. What are the stats on dogs that go missing?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

So stats can be tricky, but just knowing that like in 2025, we took in 71,000 reports, I think shows that there's a need for it. The problem with the average Facebook group that you see in your community for missing pets is that there is no follow-through on that. And a pet can be missing, hopefully it's only missing a few hours, and that post on the social media group is successful. But if the dog or cat or whatever it may be, ferret or bird or whatever, is missing for more than a few days, it really needs to be put into a centralized database that is searchable because that dog can or cat, I keep saying dog because I do, so I apologize for that. But pet FBI deals with all kinds of pets, not just dogs. But if that pet is missing for more than a few days, it could end up across the country. Could end up in the next, it could end up a Canadian dog, could end up in the United States. So having it in a searchable database is very important because the fate, you know, the Facebook groups, things drop down them very quickly, and people tend to not scroll down far enough, right? And the other thing is that they often don't get updated when the pet gets found. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 31:03

We've struggled with that with our own social media. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to jump in like that.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

No, no, that's fine. Yes, that's a that's when you said that, you said it with such emphasis that you know that it's a struggle. And then people get burnout, right? So people that might have been helpful, like sharing posts or watching for a missing pet in their neighborhood or whatever, they get burned out because they never hear the update of what happened, whether the dog was found or still missing. Whereas we have a very robust program to keep things updated. Now, granted, not every owner lets us know, but they do get email reminders like, has your dog been found? And if their dog hasn't been found, then we make sure the listing remains active.

SPEAKER_03 31:45

Like, of course, people are desperate to find their pets and we want to help. But one of the things that burnout is very real for large accounts like us, because we get asked sometimes two or three times a week to share a post. And I'm like, like this post, I do a little bit of research and it's months old. And I'm like, what's the has this dog been found? This is months old. And the person's, oh, we're just sharing it.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

And that we lose a lot of credibility sometimes if we share a post, and then somebody in the comments is like, This dog has been found months ago. What are you doing? So that yeah, that burnout is very real and it makes us a bit gun shy to help because yeah, because we've been burnt in the past. Yes. Even though we really want to help, and we would if our dogs went missing, we would love people to help too.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

That that's one of the things we're real proud of, is that we really work hard to make sure that the listings are correct and up to date. And so that when the owner comes back into PetFBI and marks their pet as reunited, then we put out a reunited post so that people can see that the pet's reunited. And yeah, we're we work real hard at that.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

So so your pet goes missing, you log into Pet FBI. Do you need to make an account? Do you need to upload pictures? I apologize if you explained that and I just missed it.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Okay, yeah. No, yes, you make an account, very simple, and then you upload a picture of your dog or cat on a location, and a little uh a few details helps, and it then it automatically creates the report and posts to the appropriate Facebook page. And then all of the state organizations were all volunteer run, and we all have different numbers of volunteers. Like in

Flyers Still Find The Most Pets

SPEAKER_01 33:32

some states we have very robust volunteer programs, in other states we maybe have just one or two volunteers. Depending on the state or the province, depends on the next steps in the process. But the post immediately goes to Facebook, and then a volunteer will come behind and actually create what we call as the flyer template and put that template onto Facebook on that social media link so that it's very eye-catching, it makes people it it when people see it, it's a very standard format. They get the idea that they can then print that flyer if they wanted to, and maybe post it at the grocery store or whatever. Because honestly, I've been doing this since 2010. And even though social media is wonderful, it has its limitations. And of course, you know what the Facebook algorithms can be like. Sometimes they show things to people and sometimes they don't. And getting those flyers printed and distributed in the neighborhood where the pet went missing is the number one way that pets are found.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

No way, really, like the old school putting flyers up, hey? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Old school, knocking on doors, distributing flyers, hanging them in the neighborhood, not nailing them to trees. Thank you very much, because that's not nice. And but get distribute distributing them the best you can without defacing, you know, yes, yeah, obviously, yeah. Yeah, trees or public utility poles or whatever. Uh but that is the number one way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

Man, I would hate to be in that position of having lost a pet. Do you have does the organization beyond signing into pet FBI, does is there any tips and tricks to avoid having your pet get lost?

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Oh, yes. Yes. We have a very robust on the pet FBI website, there is a lot of prevention tips because that we would love that everybody read those, what tier to them, try to try to take heed and make sure that your pet doesn't go missing. But accidents happen all the time. Yeah, they do. Yeah. And so we try to never be judgmental about how a pet went missing because the person is distraught and panicking, and that does absolutely no good to help them get their pet home. There's time after afterwards, and you can gently suggest that maybe they repair their fence or check their screen doors or whatever it may be. But but in while the pet is missing, we never ever judge how the and we we try to focus most of our efforts on helping the people get the pet home and not on and not on telling them what they should have done.

Prevention Without Blame

SPEAKER_03 36:09

Focus on the reunitation reunion the focus on reuniting, right? Not blame and shame. Like the academic.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

I try to think of as like a first response agency. If I have a heart attack, I don't want the ambulance attendant to stand over me and tell me I shouldn't have I should have exercised more and not eaten so much.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

So that's what we that's what we tried to do.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

Yeah, accidents do happen. Our Bernice Mountain dog actually went viral on multiple occasions. Bunsen, he on a very cold day, I took the him and beaker on a walk. We live on a farm in the middle of Alberta, and he bounded down into the creek and down in the creek where we normally don't go in the winter. He found an elderly dog in distress, like just in the middle of nowhere. Okay. Our family we banded together after Bunsen found this dog and we sled, we used the sled to get the dog back to our house. Luckily, my wife found a post on a local Facebook page.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:12

So it was like it was the family was distraught that this dog was missing, and it was just an accident. The dog was the owner of the dog was very elderly. She had just lost her husband. Okay. And the dog wasn't wearing a collar because of like health reasons, and then it just bolted when she was taking the dog out to go to the washroom. There's a there's a obviously if the lady had a fence, maybe, but it was an accident. Yeah, it never happens.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

It happens all all the time. I mean, that's what we deal with daily. And people don't think about the other things that you can take all the precautions in the world, but if you're in a car accident and EMT or police officer, whatever, comes to help you, they're there to help you. They're not help there to help your dog, and they open the door and your dog's gone. He's already traumatized by the car accident and out to go. And or house fires. There was a we had a dog missing yesterday from a house fire. Yeah, firefighter goes in to check for people and stop the fire, and the dog gets out, and he's again the dog is traumatized, right? Yeah. And he's gone.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

One thing that you had you had mentioned mentioned that might be interesting to talk about is survival mode and lost pet behavior.

Survival Mode And Lost Dog Behavior

SPEAKER_03 38:25

I would be fascinated to hear about that from somebody that deals with that way more than the one time we had to rescue that lost dog. If you could, Kathy, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

So this I always tell our volunteers when I'm training volunteers that this is probably the hardest conversation you're gonna have with an owner is convincing them that their beloved dog, who normally would not leave their side, will not come back to them. And that is what we call survival mode. When even a dog that is very strongly bonded with a person, when they go into survival mode, their priorities change. And it's actually a good thing because when an animal goes into survival mode, whether it be a dog or a cat, they that that helps them survive because they become focused, they focus all of their energy, adrenaline, whatever, into surviving. And that's what will help them survive. So they will focus on avoiding predators, which unfortunately then becomes all humans as well as other predators out there. They focus their energy on finding food, water, and shelter, and on having strategic hiding places, so where they can hide during, usually during the day, and then come out at night and look for food and water. And they so they'll often go nocturnal and they will try to avoid all people. So owners often don't understand that. And the sooner that we can get them to understand that, the better the chance that we have of helping them safely recover their dog. Because they are the it when an owner doesn't understand that, they tend to do all the wrong things. And they'll chase the dog or call the dog or whistle to the dog, and all of that is a perceived threat to a dog that's in survival mode. Again, I'm speaking speaking specifically about dogs, but I understand cat behavior is very can be very similar, and when cats are lost and frightened, they will just hide, right? And avoid people. So and so people they don't they do the wrong thing, or they enlist a bunch of friends and neighbors to help them try to find their dog. And that's usually a bad idea because now you have a whole bunch of people possibly chasing the dog or calling for the dog or whistling for the dog or trying to flush the dog out of its hiding spot. And it just needs time to settle and relax. And once dogs can settle and relax and return and get a reliable pattern of behavior where they can find food and water and have their shelter and have their hiding places, they will return to a more domesticated state of mind. And then you can really implement a plan to catch them, whether that may be a humane trap or luring them back to where they went missing from. But if they are being chased or pursued or pressured in any way, they will usually just continue to move. And they will make very poor decisions, and then the chance of them running into traffic is very high. The number one cause of death in what we do is being hit by a car. And that is dogs that are in a very heightened state of awareness and have been pursued and are chased into traffic. They can also also fairly common for them to be chased into a body of water. That sounds you think, okay, why would a dog do that? But they're just they're frightened, they're scared, they're making really bad decisions. They'll run into a body of water and drown, or in the winter time run onto thin ice and then fall through the ice and drown. And then the other thing is that they can be hit by a train, and that is actually quite common. And people say, why wouldn't they just get on the train off the train tracks? But for whatever reason, they're on the train tracks and they don't get off in time. And that's the same thing. They're in a very heightened sense of awareness and they're making really bad decisions. But dogs that aren't being chased or pursued will make very good decisions, will become very resourceful, and will live indefinitely. And we've had dogs caught years later, right? Sometimes have traveled a long ways, but can be caught years later and have actually survived quite well on their own.

How To Approach A Flighty Dog

SPEAKER_03 42:50

So the what's a suggestion then? I'm just trying to think. If you see if your dog is lost and you have seen it and it's flighty and it's running away, it would obviously you're right, that would be a very hard discussion to have with the people to say just let it go for a second.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

Um like put food out and just hope for the best, or so if you're the owner and you see if you're not the owner and you see the dog that you know is missing in your area, the best thing to do is just call the owner, have give all the details where you saw the dog, which way they were going, that kind of thing. But to not pursue the dog at all. Snap a picture if possible, of course, because then the owner can confirm that yes, this is my dog, or no, that that isn't my dog. If you're the owner and you see your dog, the best thing to do is sit down on the ground and face away from your dog, get it down as low as possible, and then throw out some really tasty treats behind you. And we always suggest that owners have something like little bits of hot dog or something really yummy in their pocket, right? And throw that out behind you, and your dog might creep up from behind. He might get a whiff of you and realize, oh, I think that smells familiar, and then get a whiff of something good to eat. And creep up behind, and then that they'll often come come around that way and come out of survival mode very quickly. But that is a hard one because the owner, of course, doesn't want to let the dog out of their sight, but it's better to just sit down, get as low as possible, beho below the eye level of the dog. And if it's a small dog, you've got to get really low on the ground. You should be lying on the ground. And then just be patient and wait and see if they'll creep up. If they don't creep up, then we suggest leaving food and water, and we call it a feeding station, at the location where you saw them. And hopefully it's in a like you want to do it in a safe place. You don't want to do it on a roadway. You want to do it in a place off the road. And then put a trail camera up so that you can monitor that feeding station and then reliably keep filling that food dish once a day, maybe twice a day, and just get that dog on a reliable feeding schedule, and then they will usually come out of survival mode themselves. And pretty soon they'll probably be waiting for you to come and fill the food dish. Aw. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:04

Those are all really good suggestions. I appreciate that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Yeah. We and we never say never, right? We never because we've had so many surprises over the years, things that you think has happened or was is going to happen, doesn't happen. But just for all the years we've been doing this, we see patterns emerge, and we can hopefully give good suggestions to people that the the we we always try to focus on what probably happened to the dog, not what possibly happened to the dog. Because if you get the owner focused on working in a logical fashion to what towards what probably happened, then you have a really good chance of getting them back home. Does that make sense? That's a lot of work.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

No, it's no, it's great. No, this is really good information. And it's not something that if thankfully our family has had to worry about. This is all really good information.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

And we have like risk factors that we talk about too, like risk factors for if a dog is going to go into survival mode very quickly. Or if they're going to be what I call the happy wanderer, which is just a dog that is in a good frame of mind and just wanders off. Right? Okay. A friendly dog that just wanders off.

SPEAKER_03 46:20

Yeah. Yeah, there's been a couple farm family dogs that have done that too around us.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

So generally well socialized dogs that are just off. They just started off chasing a squirrel or whatever, and then got a little too far and got confused.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

Yeah. So another question I was going to ask you about is like it was in kind of the re the research

Why Lost Pets End Up Shelters

SPEAKER_03 46:43

into the organization. There there was a really shocking stat that a ton of pets in shelters are actually they're lost pets.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

I was wondering if you could talk about that. What is the amount and what are the consequences there?

SPEAKER_01 47:00

Well, there's I can't say that we know an exact amount, but there is definitely estimates out there that it can be very high. I would say more than 50%. Because really the only two, there's really only, I guess you could say, three scenarios that animals should end up in shelters. One is if there is surrender, right? If somebody can't keep their pet any longer and surrenders it. The other is if there are a well, we don't like to use the word stray, but that's how what the shelter term is. So that's a lost pet that has ended up in a shelter. And then the third is maybe an impound, a domestic situation or something like that, where there's been an impound of the pets. But sh the shelter statistics show that they the majority of their intake is strays, and those are lost pets. But they didn't they didn't fall out of the sky. Those domesticated animals were somebody's pet at some point. Now they could have come a very long ways. They could have been, they could have been transported across state lines by who whatever the reason may be. In Wisconsin, we often get transports from Texas to our shelters because there's more homeless animals in Texas than there are in Wisconsin. But a lot of those actually have homes in Texas that somebody was looking for people were looking for their pet. And it fell into the, I call it the maze of the shelter system, where shelter stray holes are very short. So there people are only given a very short time to find their pet in a shelter. And if it's not fat, if it's not found at the shelter, it can be put up for adoption, it can be euthanized, it can be transferred out to a different organization. And so working through that maze of conf is again, is it can be very confusing for the owner. A lot of owners don't even know where their local animal control facility is, let alone get there in the time allowed by the law in their area. And every state has different laws. Like in Wisconsin, we have a five-day stray hold, but some places are as low as zero days. You have to you would have to get there immediately to pick up your animal. If not, it's they take ownership of it and they can do whatever they like with it. So that's one of our things too, in our kind of our prevention or our be prepared sort of thing, is we tell people to know your animal control policies in your area, in your municipality or whatever it may be, a county or a city or a village, or because that can be a huge factor, right?

SPEAKER_03 49:41

Yeah, if your pet goes missing, here is a place you could go. It may reliably be. Like if it's uh the dogs or cats out and about and it gets scooped up, that's where it's gonna go, right? It's gonna probably go. Huh.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

And unfortunately, people often they find a pet, it could have already crossed a jurisdiction line. So it could have crossed from one county to another, and the person that finds it takes it to the spot that is the correct place for where the animal was found, but it isn't where the owner's looking. They were looking one county over, and they're looking in their local facility, not the next county over. Or sometimes people take it to completely the completely wrong facility. Like they see a dog on the side of the road on their way to work, and they work an hour away from where they live. And so they think, okay, I'm just gonna pick up this dog and I'll take it to the shelter in Ekingson County, which is the wrong county, right? Yeah, and the owner never ever does figure out. And that's the another reason why the centralized database is so important, like getting as many pets as we can in one place so that people can search online and not because most shelters require that you drive to them and go in person and look. They they don't all post pictures online. And again, people don't always realize that their pet could be like we're just where I live in Wisconsin here. If my dog went missing, he could end up in one of six different facilities within a 20-mile area. And I know that because I do this every day, but I can tell you that most of my neighbors don't know that. They wouldn't know where to look.

SPEAKER_03 51:15

Would

Microchips Only Work If Updated

SPEAKER_03 51:17

like all of our dogs and our cat bricks, they are microchipped. They've got that little thing in that you register. Yep. And I'm not the one that did this. My wife is the person that did this because she's better than me. Would that alleviate, would that be something to help with this? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Yeah. Big we're big believers in microchips. The problem with microchips, again, is that it's can they're confusing, and a lot of people get their pet microchip and then do not remember to keep the microchip up to date.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

And when the average, I don't know what the Canadian is, but the average American moves once every seven years, and most pets live 15 years, and so the people have moved and forgot to to update their microchip, or they had a landline that was on their microchip, and then they drop their landline and just go with a cell phone, and that was never put on the microchip. And so there is a lot of moving parts there too that need to be addressed. But educating people about that is also a big part of what we try to do is get your pets microchip and make sure that microchip is kept up to date and make sure that you scan that microchip at least once per year. Ask your vet to do it at a yearly vet at your yearly vet visit to make sure that it's still working. It's not common, but it is possible for microchips to stop functioning, especially in some of the heavier muscle breeds. They don't stop functioning, they're just harder to find in heavy muscle breeds. And sometimes microchips can move. They the if the microchip was implanted in a, let's say, a puppy, and then the puppy's jumping around for the next three hours doing playing or doing whatever, that microchip can move really easily. We always try to remind people that you should actually keep your pet quiet for about 24 hours after you implant a microchip to make sure that it has in there.

SPEAKER_03 53:10

This is all fascinating. I'm just so glad you've you gave up some of your time to talk to us. So I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

Oh, I appreciate I appreciate the opportunity. It's it's the more that we can get the word out, the more that we can get more lost pets home, and that's what we like to do.

SPEAKER_03 53:25

Before we get to our last question, Kathy, you had some interesting stats to share with us about the amount of lost pets and percentages.

SPEAKER_01 53:33

Yeah, so the of those 71,000 reports in 2025, I think it's really interesting. 71% were dogs, 27% were cats, and 2% of the reports were other animals. That includes birds, small mammals like ferrets, hamsters, guinea pigs, and reptiles, snakes, tortoises are the most common ones. It doesn't mean that there's more lost dogs than lost cats, I don't believe. I believe that it's more of an awareness thing, and a lot of people are probably more reluctant to file a report for a lost cat because maybe it's an indoor-outdoor cat and they just assume it's going to come home on its own in a few days. But I just think it's interesting. That's kind of where we're at.

SPEAKER_03 54:16

Yeah, that's interesting. There we've talked before about the amount of cats versus dogs in North America, and cats win over dogs. There are more cats in North America than there are dogs. But yeah, then a lot, but that's because there's a lot of feral cats out there in places in North America. Yeah. Interesting. I would hope that if you've got a great big tortoise, it doesn't, it's that's a very moving pet to have at a speed.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

That makes me laugh because you would think, right? You would think, but it's amazing. And tortoises appear I'm not an expert in lost tortoise behavior, but the ones that we've had reported, they've usually dug down somewhere. So they are not too far away, but they're buried somewhere. They just dug in the dirt and went to sleep.

SPEAKER_02 54:59

Yes, yes, they dug in the dirt somewhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:03

I have heard of reptiles escaping, like snakes and iguanas and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 55:09

So yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 55:10

Yeah, that is not unheard of even in our area.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:14

An iguana escaped in uh September, and then there was a cold snap, and it fell out of the tree it was in because it froze. It wound up being totally okay, but it plopped down in front of some people. And they're like, Oh, that's where it went. And they with the owner. Because there's not too many people in a given area that's saying, Hey, I'm missing an iguana, right? Right. One question we ask all our guests as a wrap-up is to share a story about one of their own pets from their life. I was wondering

Pixie’s Lost Dog Story

SPEAKER_03 55:42

if you could do that, Kathy, for us.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Okay. Oh, one of my own. So I guess I'll just tell the story of a little dog that she's unfortunately passed been passed away, but she was a little dog that we had named Pixie, and she was a lost dog. So she was a dog. I was volunteering at a local shelter, and she was a little dog that was brought in as a str as a stray, as we talked about, which I don't like to use that word because I don't think of them as strays, I think of them as lost pets. And then she did her at the time it was a seven-day stray hold in Wisconsin, and nobody had come in to claim her. And she was very fearful, and she was not a good candidate for adoption. So her pro her outcome was not going to be probably very good. But one of the staff members at the shelter asked if I'd like to take her home for the weekend and just see what I thought and see if I thought she was re you know, she could be rehabilitated and perhaps adopted out. And I said, sure, we'll try. And so I brought her home and I was looking at her, she was so cute, but she was very scared and she would bite, she was she would bite out of fear, and I started looking through lost pet listings in the area. And this was before I was with Pet FBI. I was very interested in lost dog behavior, but I was but I the I wasn't attuned to all the resources that were out there yet. So I started scouring the internet to see if I could find a listing for her. And I did find a listing for her. She had been listed as lost four months before, and her name had been Freckles. And so I called the owners, sent them pictures, and yes, indeed, it was their little Freckles. But and they were happy that she was found. But when I explained that she was very fear aggressive, they did not feel that she was going to be a good fit in their family anymore because they had small children, and she they had told their children that she had probably passed away, they'd given up looking for her, and they had gotten a new puppy. And so, needless to say, she stayed at our house for the next 13 years because she fit in just fine with our family. And I was sad, but I also recognized the fact that she probably was not going to be a good fit in their family again. Um, and she f it was with just my husband and myself, and we have a very quiet household, and she was fine with that, but I didn't think she would do really well with small children because she was had been, I think she'd been chased a lot while she lived on the streets. So she had been missing four months in the winter, and she had survived. She was hadn't lost a lot of weight or anything, but but she was very scared. And did her did she come around in those 13 years for your family? She was never keen on being picked up and she never she was always very fearful of strangers, but with my husband and I she was fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:33

Right. Yeah, I have heard that that you have to temper your expectations if you have a really traumatized dog. That your wins are not necessarily going to be the cute, cuddly dog that you were hoping for. But they're big wins, anyways, when you look to see where they get started from.

SPEAKER_01 58:51

And she taught me a ton about lost dog behavior, like watching her, like where she could hide anywhere. She could, you know, she could find some tiny little space to squeeze into to hide. She still she ate bird seed and she ate nuts off the ground and grass

Petfbi.org Resources And Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_01 59:05

and things that lost dogs do eat to survive. So she really taught me a lot.

SPEAKER_03 59:12

Thank you for sharing that. We're coming to the end of our interview. Petfbi is that dot org, petfbi.org. Yes. All right. So folks who are interested, we'll have a link in the show notes so people can just click on that as a hyperlink after they're done listening to the interview and the show. Is there anything else you'd like to tell people about that they should check out?

SPEAKER_01 59:36

No, that I would just suggest that you check out the knowledge base at petfbi.org. So not only can you go on there and list the lost or found pet, but they have a very there's a very extensive knowledge base of things that we've been talking about, uh tips, uh especially tips to help to find lost cats. That's that's a really good resource there. Um, yeah, prevention tips, all kinds of things. Tips on getting your microchip updated.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:00

Nice. You know what? Thank you so much for being our guest today, Kathy. I so appreciate your expertise. And I'm sure the folks that listen to this, it's gonna help some family out there that's hopefully will be reunited, but maybe in a tough way when they're they have a lost pet.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:17

Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

That's it for this week,

Patreon Shoutouts And Closing

SPEAKER_03 1:00:21

show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the science podcast. And a shout out to all the top dogs. That's the top tier of our Patreon community, the Popack. You can sign up in our show notes. All right, Chris, let's hear those names that are part of the top dogs.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:36

Shona J. Schneider, Patrick, Jennifer Esthery, Barbara Radner, Amelia Fettig, Rhee Ota, Carol A. Hemel, Jennifer Chalan, Karen Cronster, Vicky Otero, Cassie M. Christy Snake Walker, Sarah Brimham, Wendy Diane Mason, and Lou. Helen Chin, Elizabeth Bourgeois, Marianne McNally, Katherine G. Jordan, Shelly Smith, Laura Steffenson, Tracy Leinbaugh, Anne Uchida, Heather Burbach, Kelly King, Tracy Halbert, Ben Rathart, Debbie Anderson, Sandy Brimer, Mary Lamagna Ryder, Bianca Hyde, Andrew Lynn, Brenda Clark, Brianne Haas, Peggy McKeel, Holly Birch, Kathy Zirker, Susan Wagner, and Liz Button.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

Let's go adventure in the table.