Lost and Found Pets Tip
The Old Bridge Animal Shelter offers the following tips to help you reunite with your pet.
Lost pets
What To Do If You Lose Your Pet
1. call the local non-emergency police dept and animal shelter
2. email the poster to the animal shelter and vet hospital in the surrounding area.
3. post your lost pet information on social media
Get the word out. Please don’t assume your pet will return on its own in a few hours. As soon as you become aware that your pet is missing, begin to do the following:
Contact the Old Bridge Police Dept – Non-emergency # (732) 721-4000. If you’re an Old bridge resident, the police Dept might be able to help you to locate your lost pet with a detailed description of your pet if someone did found your pet.
Contact the Old Bridge Animal Shelter at (732) 721-5600 x 6300. We can help you file a lost pet report with a detailed description of your pet if you are an Old Bridge resident. You can e-mail a picture of your lost pet to: Animalcontrol@oldbridge.com. Visit the shelter within the first week that your pet goes missing. If we have new intake animals, we will escort you through the dog and cat rooms to see if your pet is at the shelter. If Animal Control picked up your pet, it would be brought to the Old Bridge Animal Shelter, located at 1 Old Bridge Plaza, Old Bridge. All persons reclaiming a lost pet must provide identification for themselves and their pet.
Search the neighborhood. Walk or drive through your neighborhood several times each day. Ask neighbors, letter carriers, and delivery people if they have seen your pet. Create a flyer to hand out with a recent photograph and description of your pet and contact information if your pet is found.
Advertise. Post flyers at grocery stores, community centers, veterinary offices, traffic intersections, pet supply stores, and other locations. Also, place advertisements in newspapers and with radio stations. Include your pet's sex, age, weight, breed, color, and any special markings. When describing your pet, leave out one identifying characteristic and ask the person who finds your pet to describe it.
Be aware of pet-recovery scams. When talking to a stranger who claims to have found your pet, ask him to describe the pet thoroughly before you offer any information. If he does not include the identifying characteristic you left out of the advertisements, he may not really have your pet. Be particularly wary of people who insist that you give or wire them money for the return of your pet.
Don't give up your search. Dogs and cats often wander far away and do things you wouldn’t predict they would do. Try everything, look everywhere, and tell everyone. Animals who have been lost for months have been reunited with their owners.
A pet, even one that stays indoors, has a better chance of being returned if it wears a collar and an ID tag with your name, address, and telephone number. The best is to microchip your pets with all updated contact information.
Found Pets
contact "Local" non-emergency police dept and animal shelter immediately.
If you find a stray animal in Old Bridge, you may bring it into the Shelter Monday through Sunday 7 am-3 pm or contact non-emergency police dept 732 721 5600 x 6300 for a pick-up from animal control 24/7
If you found the stray animal in the other town, please call the local police where the location the stray animal was found to find out how to reach the appropriate animal control agency. We cannot accept stray animals from other towns. Also, it’s hard to reunite the found animals with their owner.
Additional Links
Contact Information
Animal Control Officers
Lynn Steckel
Marion Ashmead
Phone: 732-721-5600 Ext.6300
Email