An open gate and empty backyard can breed panic. Pet owners realize they have a date with every light pole and bulletin board in the city, canceling appointments and digging up photographs of their vanished animal.
But four legs can cover a lot more ground than two, and a few hundred more pairs of eyes can raise the margin of success.
These assumptions are the basis for Peter Glynn’s mailing service Lost Pet Cards (www.lostpetcards.com), a pet-finding business relying on speed. Customers submit an online description and photo of their pet, and a fleet of postcards is sent overnight to up to 1,000 neighborhood residences within a certain distance of the last pet-sighting. Glynn’s goal is to decrease legwork and speed up the word of mouth process, a system that has met with consistent results.
“It gives more leads than anything,” Glynn says. “People get more calls then they get with anything else they’ve tried. Neighbors call if they’ve seen the animal around, maybe they saw a dog that looks like their dog, or actually saw the dog. Some people just call to wish them well. It’s kind of like phone therapy.”
But therapy and paper can get a little pricey, and even cards cheaper than a postage stamp add up in costs. A minimum order for 1,000 postcards tops out at $480, a figure that rises with each thousand, though per-card costs decrease.
“For some people, all they do is their pets,” Glynn says. “My other brother has this 10-year-old dog in diapers that he and his family have to lift onto the bed every day, and he gets it. People will either totally understand or totally not understand, and I just hope that enough people will understand to keep our equipment going 24 hours a day to offer this service.”
Glynn reports a total of over 350 orders placed since the conception of the business in 2007, translating to 350 individual quests for lost pets.
