Phone technology helps return lost pets

25 Jul 2012, 3:26 pm   -   Source: AAP

When frantic pet owners contact the RSPCA's pet detection service, it will deploy 2000 messages to landlines and mobile phones in the area concerned.

Hundreds of pets go missing in Queensland each month, but now automated phone technology is helping them find their way home.

Reach TEL, the same company that conducted automatic polling during the Queensland election, is now putting its technology to good use for the RSPCA.

When frantic pet owners contact the RSPCA's pet detection service, it will deploy 2000 messages to landlines and mobile phones in the area concerned.

If the recipient has seen the lost pet, they can be transferred to the call centre, or request a call back.

RSPCA Queensland says it's a vast improvement on the old fashioned methods of calling local pounds and vets or putting up posters.

In a trial of the technology, Michelle Fitzpatrick was reunited with her labrador Rory within an hour.

The black lab bolted out of the gate on a dark night, and adding further to his owners' worries, needed medication for epilepsy.

"The medication is very important, so really we were panicking," Mrs Fitzpatrick said.

An hour after calling the RSPCA on the recommendation of a local vet, a woman phoned to say she had Rory.

The five-year-old had ventured about two kilometres through bushland and across a busy road - and beyond the area the Fitzpatricks had considered looking for him.

Last year, RSPCA Queensland received more than 32,000 calls about lost and found pets.

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